


Running Out the Clock

by ladyeternal



Series: Angelic Mates 'verse [13]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Supernatural
Genre: Broken Mating Bond, Double Cross, Episode: s05e21 Two Minutes to Midnight, I'm Sorry, M/M, Sam Winchester Says Yes to Lucifer, Soul Selling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-09-24 10:17:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17098742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyeternal/pseuds/ladyeternal
Summary: The war between Michael and Lucifer has been fraught with heartbreaking choices from the very beginning.  For Dean and Gabriel, giving Sam up to Lucifer is no kind of choice at all, even as it becomes increasingly clearer that all may be lost if they don’t.When Fate and Free Will collide in an abandoned apartment in Detroit, the die will be cast, but a single breath could change what will happen when it lands.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If I owned Supernatural, certain events would **_NEVER_** have happened and there would be unabashed pr0n. I own little more than a tabby that gets destructive when he feels ignored and am only playing with these worlds for my own amusement and the free entertainment of others.
> 
> Author’s Note: It has taken a long time to get into the right headspace to write the stories that would bring the Apocalypse arc in this universe to a close. This is the first of four stories written during NaNoWriMo 2018 intended to do just that, and I hope that you all find them worth the wait.
> 
> Beta’d by the truly magnificent [SicLuceatLux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SicLuceatLux) and [Eggs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iknewhim). I adore you both. Also a huge shout-out to [Linnea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrmling) and everyone else on Discord that helped me finish these fics by sprinting with me during NaNoWriMo 2018! I could never have gotten this done without you.
> 
> Feedback is adored, so if you like the fic, please comment! And the more details the better; I love knowing what people like about my work.
> 
> The soundtrack for this series is now on [Spotify!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Aq3bennOSSNnAysAotw4f)

~ooooOOOoooo~

“Dr. Green!” The thin voice from the elderly woman in the bed was still filled with warmth as she greeted the man walking into her room. “How was your trip?”

“Very productive, Celeste.” There was an answering warmth in his own voice as he sat down, folding her shaking hand into both of his. “And how is my favorite patient? The nurse tells me you can’t sleep.”

“Oh, I just feel worse and worse,” she offered, a trace of pain lacing into her voice. She’d been raised to downplay discomfort, after all, but Dr. Green had always been so kind to her, and saw right through her demurs.

“Well,” the doctor offered mildly, “that’s because you’re suffering from the common cold… dengue fever…” He took a long breath, almost oblivious to the increasing alarm of his patient. “... and a nasty, nasty case of Japanese encephalitis.”

As Celeste struggled to form a response in the face of his calmly-delivered diagnoses, a nurse rushed into the room and closed the door. “Sir, we have to get you out of here,” she insisted, pushing a medical cart in front of the door in a meager attempt to barricade it.

“What is it now?” the doctor demanded impatiently. “Can’t you see I’m busy? She’s never had chicken pox.”

“The perimeter’s been breached,” she explained, her eyes sliding black in panic. “Angels, sir; allies of the Winchesters.”

Pestilence let out a muted snarl of anger, rising from the bed even as he set twin waves of herpes zoster and varicella loose inside the old woman in the bed. “Can’t even play with my favorite petri dish in peace. You know what those insolent meat-sacks did to my brothers?”

“Which is why we need to go now,” the demon insisted. “We’re outnumbered here, sir, and your powers won’t work on-”

Pestilence stepped back as his favorite attendant was cut down with a gasp, her essence burned out as angelic steel sliced through her. The cherub that had dispatched her faced him without fear as the body crumpled to the ground, and Pestilence gazed back at her with even less trepidation. “Demons,” he sneered. “So easily intimidated. You’re barely more than a harpist, aren’t you?”

“I prefer percussion instruments myself,” Hester informed the Horseman coolly, unwilling to back down.

A heartbeat later, and she was trembling, her vessel’s blood beginning to leak out of one nostril. “Then you won’t mind my using your vessel’s innards as one.” The cherub dropped to the floor a moment later as he lifted his right hand and turned the emerald ring he wore on the left. “After all, you can’t use those holy powers of yours against me if it’s all you can do to keep your vessel’s organs from liquefying, can you?” He took one menacing step towards his newest victim, the elderly human in the nearby bed choking on her own vomit the only sound in the room…

And then it was Pestilence crying out in pain as grace-infused steel bit into his side, forcing him backwards. In the confused aftermath of being wounded, the Horseman could only snarl in fury as his left wrist was grabbed and slammed down onto a plexiglass-topped table by an angel he hadn’t even noticed entering the room, his blood spraying across the trench coat the angel wore as a blade almost as ancient sliced through three of his fingers in one swipe.

“She’s stronger than she looks,” Castiel returned coldly. He glanced at Hester as the wounded Horseman staggered away, clutching his bleeding hand. “Are you all right?”

Pushing herself to her feet, Hester answered by stalking across the room. Without so much as a word, she drove her blade through Pestilence’s right eye and out the back of his skull. The body he’d occupied gave a final gurgle as it crumpled to the floor, and Hester’s expression was contemptuously pleased as she braced her foot against it to draw her blade back out. “I am now, sir.”

Picking up one of the fingers, Castiel drew the ring from the severed digit and cleaned the blood from it with a thought. “The woman?”

“Gone,” Hester reported. “Her body was nearly too weak to support itself even before Pestilence went to work on her.”

“Do a sweep,” Castiel ordered. “You and the others heal any humans that have survived Pestilence’s attentions and clear the building. We must cleanse the bodies of the fallen before we return to Sioux Falls.”

Hester gave a short nod of acceptance. “What about him?” she asked, gesturing at the vessel that Pestilence had left behind.

“Him, too,” Castiel informed her. “The humans whose lives were cut short by a Horseman’s possession are no less deserving of rites than those that are lost in the service of God.”

A moment’s pause, and Hester’s eyes glanced over Castiel’s form. “Dean Winchester has had a profound effect on you, brother,” she observed carefully.

“Dean Winchester is my mate,” Castiel replied, a sharpness in his words that betrayed his impatience with her implication. “And Abariel assured us of your allegiance. Do not give me reason to inform Gabriel that it is in question.”

With a quick bow and an Enochian oath, Hester gathered the bodies into her wings and withdrew, leaving Castiel alone with Pestilence’s ring… and a terrible sense of foreboding.

* * *

“Is this what you do when you’re all on your own?” Bobby looked up to see Crowley standing in the doorway between his kitchen and his den, an old-fashioned glass containing what was likely whiskey lifted to his lips by a careless hand. “Squint at a computer screen and hope you spot a story about needles and haystacks?”

“You got a better idea on how to figure out where Death’s gonna turn up?” Bobby shot back. Even with how helpful Crowley had been and Aziraphale’s assurances that his demonic lover could be trusted, his fingers itched for want of the bottle of holy water he kept in his desk drawer.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” Taking another sip, Crowley set the glass down on a nearby bookcase and took a step forward. “See, you humans can try and track down omens all you like, but all you’ll manage doing it is to chase after Death’s exhaust trails. You’d be doing the same with Pestilence if the Candy-Man hadn’t told Zira to call me in. If you really want to get the drop on the last Horseman, you need to take advantage of your more specialized resources.”

“Now listen up,” Bobby snapped, standing up and coming around the desk. “The world’s working on dying ugly and fast, so I ain’t got the time or patience for all the coy crap. You know where we can find Death or not?”

“Not,” Crowley replied calmly, holding up one finger as Bobby’s mouth opened to deliver a blistering dismissal. “But…! I know how to put hands on a spell that’s 100% guaranteed to give you whatever you wish for. Up to and including Death’s future coordinates.”

Aziraphale blinking into the room covered Bobby’s stunned silence in the wake of that declaration, and gave him a moment to weigh his response more carefully. “I’ve heard from Gamaliel and Castiel,” the angel informed them. “Castiel’s party has neutralized Pestilence and secured the ring, and Gamaliel’s unit was able to remove the humans not possessed by demons or infected with that foul illness from the facility. Isis and her strike force will eliminate the building and the contagion itself to ensure that no trace can possibly escape to harm the human population.”

“Good.” Bobby hadn’t taken his eyes off Crowley during Aziraphale’s report, still uncertain of how to trust the demon’s information. Trusting the demon himself was out of the question. “Dean still inventing new swear words downstairs?”

“Not since I threatened to send him to sleep if he didn’t calm down.” Aziraphale sniffed with mild annoyance. “It’s hardly surprising that Castiel wanted him to stay behind, given the targets. Did Dean truly imagine that Castiel would just allow him to walk into the heart of Pestilence’s lair, or into a situation where the number of enemies and the layout of the facility are both unknowns? If we had fewer allies at our disposal, perhaps, but between the other Gods and the cherubim loyal to Gabriel, taking the chance on the basis of some indecipherable human principle makes no sense at all. At any rate, he’s working on that car of his and worrying after his mate and brother, so he’s got more than enough to distract him at the moment.”

“Yeah,” Bobby acknowledged, eyes still trained on Crowley. “Your pal here was just telling me he knows how we can get a fix on Death.”

“Oh!” A bright smile broke across Aziraphale’s face. “Excellent. The sooner we enact the spell, the sooner we can finish our preparations for putting a stop to all this.”

“You arrived just as Bobby was going to ask what the spell was going to cost him,” Crowley put in, a too-innocent smile on his face.

“How’d I know you weren’t just going to hand it over without putting a price tag on it?” Bobby groused.

“Because you know that all magic comes with a price,” Crowley replied easily. “Especially since I’m the only one that can proffer up the spell. If word started getting around that the King of the Crossroads was giving magic away for free, my reputation would be in tatters.”

“Keeping company with an angel hasn’t already managed that?” Bobby retorted snidely.

“Zira’s wings might be lily-white, but his record’s not.” Crowley flicked a minuscule piece of lint from the front of his coat. “Inevitable consequence of being on Earth for six millennia… and also beside the point. You need the spell; I want to give it to you. It’s just a matter of negotiation at this point.”

“All right,” Bobby conceded warily. “What kinda price are we talking?”

“It’s simple,” Crowley replied with a shrug. “You sell your soul for it.”

“You dirty sumbitch-”

“Robert, please…” Aziraphale cut in, his expression strangely absent the outrage that Bobby might’ve expected the angel to be wearing in response to such a suggestion. “ _Listen_ to what he has to say.”

“Rules are rules, Bobby,” Crowley explained patiently. “Like them or not, we have to play by them. The problem with humans is that you never think about gaming the system: offering up your souls in exchange for what you’re after without knowing who you’re really selling to. I’m not the one actually _buying_ ; I’m just the broker facilitating the deals.”

“So if I was to sell my soul in exchange for Death’s coordinates,” Bobby asked, carefully following the argument, “exactly who would I be selling myself to?”

Aziraphale gave an off-handed shrug. “Me, naturally.”

“You?” Bobby rounded towards the angel in disbelief. “Why would an angel be buying a soul?”

“They can be used any number of ways, actually. They’re a source of great power, unique among the infinite varieties of divine sparks. But that’s not the point. If I asked Crowley to procure me the soul of a hunter-”

“- and you sold your soul for Death’s location-” Crowley added.

“- then I would be the one to collect your soul at the end of the contract term,” Aziraphale finished. “What I do with it from there is my own business, and no one can gainsay it.”

“It’s that simple?” Bobby insisted, glancing between them both now and trying to spot any sign of entrapment. “No catches?”

“There are a few clauses that _do_ have to be included in any contract,” Crowley admitted. “But there are ways around those. You can read it for yourself before we actually seal the deal: make sure you’re comfortable with the terms. Something _else_ most humans neglect to insist on before giving it up.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale reproved. “Language, _please_. Robert’s uncomfortable enough as it is.”

“Coddling his fragile heterosexuality isn’t the priority here, angel,” Crowley returned primly. “If he can’t stomach a little innuendo, perhaps he ought to let someone who can handle this part. Squirrel’s done this once already, if I recall.”

“Much as I hate agreeing with a demon,” Bobby groused, “he’s got a point. We all spend time squatting in our comfort zones and your brothers’ll blow this planet to cinders.” He squared his shoulders and looked Aziraphale in the face. “Ten years is the standard for this sorta thing, right?”

“Oh, I don’t think it needs to be that long,” Aziraphale hedged. “After all, given the immediacy of the issue and the nature of the spell you want, it could be said that I took advantage of your lack of alternatives and pressured you into a short sale. Thirty days?”

Crowley made a discontented sound behind them. “Shut it,” Bobby snapped over his shoulder. “And you’ll give it back?”

There was a peculiar softness in Aziraphale’s eyes as he nodded. “No matter what, Robert: in thirty days, your soul will be your own again.”

“Right then.” Bobby nodded, then turned to face Crowley…

...who had moved closer during the negotiations and was now practically standing on top of him. Bobby startled, retreating a half-step away from the demon. His back pressed against the wall of Aziraphale’s chest, unexpectedly solid, and his breath shallowed against his will as the angel’s arms slid up to wrap around his chest in an embrace that was probably intended to be comforting.

“Is it terrible if I say I’m rather looking forward to this part?” There were glints of red at the edges of Crowley’s dark eyes, sharp as bloody knives.

“Thought you two were an item,” Bobby rumbled, his voice lower than he’d expected and his heart beating strangely in his ears.

“We are,” Aziraphale confirmed, his light voice a curl of air against Bobby’s sideburns.

“Don’t think about it too hard, Bobby.” Crowley closed the distance between them, his hands sliding up to cradle the curves of Bobby’s jaw. “Do you consent?”

Something coiled through Bobby’s chest at the question: a sensation so long absent as to almost feel alien. Before he could question it or lose his nerve, he nodded, bending to meet the demon’s lips halfway as Crowley’s mouth found his.

* * *

Abariel had been back only once since he’d left them an indeterminate number of hours earlier, advising them that everyone was safe and that the threat of a Croatoan outbreak had been neutralized. Gabriel had quietly acknowledged his Virtue from where he lay in Sam’s arms, only the tangled bedclothes between Abariel’s worried eyes and whatever modesty Sam might been inclined to protest.

That is, if Sam had been awake.

In fact, between heartbroken tears and the voracious lovemaking after Abariel had finally left them to themselves, Sam had tumbled into a deep, dreamless sleep, clutching Gabriel to him like the archangel might leave him for even suggesting what, in the end, was the only plan Sam believed had any chance of success. Gabriel hadn’t precisely been disposed to leave the embrace, soaking up as much of Sam’s warmth as he could and desperately trying to plan.

When hunger finally nudged Sam back up into consciousness, Gabriel’s face instantly turned up towards his, soft lips seeking his mouth and tasting the salt of leftover kisses. “Sam…”

“Hi.” Gabriel kissed him again, pressing up closer, and Sam let his arms tighten around his mate as urgency started bleeding through, the way their mouths met growing fervent, even desperate. “Gabriel…”

“Please…” Surging up, Gabriel’s arms wrapped around Sam’s neck as he gave in to the need to devour Sam’s mouth, to drown anything that either of them might say that might possibly reference the outside world. He wasn’t ready… he needed more time he wasn’t ready… “Sam, please…”

“Mate…”

It was easy to give over to what they both needed. For Sam to let his legs fall open and slip around Gabriel’s waist. For grace to leak from Gabriel into Sam wherever their skin connected, soaking through his blood like living fire that only having the archangel driving deep and hard and steady could possibly tame. They clung to one another, rocking together with the abandon that only comes from knowing that it could truly be the last time…

The archangel’s name was a shout on Sam’s lips as he tumbled into orgasm, as fierce and overwhelming as the first, short nails clawing at Gabriel’s back as his teeth found Gabriel’s lower lip and caught. The shock had Gabriel following after in two short thrusts, his entire body trembling from the force of his release.

They came back down slowly, curling into one another again as both found themselves half a breath from tears. Eventually, their bodies tipped over onto their sides of their own accord, Gabriel’s softened length slipping free of Sam’s body and Sam brushing a thumb along the arch of Gabriel’s cheekbone, catching a tear that Gabriel hadn’t realized was escaping. “It’s going to be all right,” he assured the archangel softly.

“I know it will,” Gabriel replied, his voice breaking instead of confident. “Because you’re not going to do it.”

“You know it’s the only chance we have,” Sam countered, gentle and filled with all the tears he wasn’t letting himself shed.

“As an authority on myself, I absolutely know that we have about 37 separate options besides that one.” Gabriel turned to press a kiss into Sam’s palm. “We don’t have to get divorced in order to put Luci and Mikey in time-out for a while.”

“So what’s the plan, then?” Sam asked. “And how much of my family dies in order to make it work?”

“Well, version M’s survivor list gets a little thin-”

“Gabriel, I mean it.” Sam sighed in frustration, sitting up away from his mate to glare down at him. “You’re right: we can try this any of a dozen other ways. But my plan means that, worst case scenario, Adam and I are the only ones that end up dead.”

“ _No._ ” Gabriel sat up to face him, amber eyes flaring. “No, you don’t just end up ‘dead’. You and your baby brother end up in Hell. Trapped in the worst torture chamber ever devised with two archangels that will be more than happy to take their millennia-long feud out of your _hide_ for trapping them there. Not to mention my being left behind with no way to track you down and get you out because? Oh, yeah: you had to break our bond to pull it off!”

“But it’s okay that Adam winds up in there by himself if you’re wrong?” Sam shot back, starting to get angry now. “Newsflash, Gabriel: we’re not in your TV Land trick anymore. Adam’s not just some Cousin-Oliver character that nobody cares about; either we all matter or none of us do!”

“Except Michael will protect him!” Gabriel snapped. “Big bro’s cheese might have slid completely off his cracker, but he’s not going to decide it’s Adam’s fault that we got the drop on ‘em or let Lucifer tear him new and interesting holes. Adam’s not strong enough as a vessel for him to play double-agent. Given time and a little chicanery, we could get him out of there with minimal crispy edges.

“You, though?” Gabriel went up onto his knees, shuffling closer to Sam and putting his hands on Sam’s shoulders. “You force Lucifer into the backseat, jump in that hole and make Mikey a passenger on the way down, and they will one-thousand percent blame you. And Michael will use protecting Adam as an excuse to sit on his hands while Lucifer tears you into little pieces as many times as he wants. Three days up here is a year in Hell, Sam. A _year_. What Dean went through for thirty is going to be _nothing_ compared to what you’ll go through. And you’re asking me to let it happen with no way to shortcut finding you and getting you back out.”

Sam looked away, unable to bear the expression on Gabriel’s face. “You didn’t care what I might go through six months ago.”

The words were impossible for angelic ears to miss, muttered and sullen though they were. It rocked Gabriel back onto his heels, his mouth hanging open for a handful of heartbeats before closing in a solemn line. “You really believe that I would’ve become yours if that was true?”

“You’ve never told me what changed your mind,” Sam admitted, hesitant to look back up at the archangel but knowing he needed to.

“Same reason I gave Dean back to you instead of leaving him stashed with Freyja and her girls in Folkvangr.” He permitted himself a small, sly smile as he watched Sam’s eyes widen. “You never guessed? Even after you found out what my alias has been all this time?” Sam shook his head and Gabriel’s grin widened. “Damn, I’m good sometimes.”

“I never really gave myself space to wonder about it,” Sam confessed. “I know Dean’s probably wondered, since he doesn’t remember even being dead, but I guess I… didn’t really want to think about it.”

Gabriel shifted to sit cross-legged beside Sam, reaching up almost without thought to brush the hair away from Sam’s face. “Freyja’s an old friend, and the only one other than Loki that knew the truth before Kali blew my cover. I knew who you both were in Springfield, but the table’s been set for the Apocalypse before and nothing’s ever come of it. By the time we saw each other again in Florida…”

The archangel didn’t need to complete the sentence for Sam to understand. “So you tried to warn me.”

“I tried to stop it,” Gabriel corrected. “The First Seal couldn’t be broken if your brother never went to Hell. So I trapped you both in a bubble, and then the first time I killed him, I took his soul to Freyja and asked her to stash it. All those other deaths were illusions, carefully created to try and make you let him stay dead. If you’d believed that he was gone already and not coming back, I could’ve left him in Folkvangr and you could’ve gone back to your life and the whole stupid mess could’ve been packed back into its box for another few hundred years.”

“So why’d you give him back?” Sam asked. “Why didn’t you just tell me-?”

“Would you have believed me then?” Gabriel cut in. “Standing there with tears in your eyes and pleading for your brother’s life, you’d have just let him stay dead if I’d told you that I wasn't really a Trickster but an archangel, I’d stashed Dean in a different pantheon’s Heaven and that pulling him back out like you wanted was going to end with the Apocalypse being jumpstarted?”

“Why did you give him back, Gabriel?” Sam asked again, catching the hand stroking through his hair and twining their fingers together. “If you didn’t think I’d believe you and you didn’t want the Apocalypse to have a shot at getting off the ground, then why?”

Something that made Sam’s heart ache haunted the edges of the archangel’s responding smile. Something he’d only caught glimpses of even through the bond: a wound deep and ancient and unhealed despite the countless aeons since it was struck. “Because,” Gabriel told him softly, “you shine even brighter than the Morning Star.”

There was no controlling the small, wounded sound that left Sam at that, his expression shifting somewhere between deeply moved and stunned anguish.

“I saw it even when we first met,” Gabriel went on, unwilling to hold anything back now that the truth was out. Almost praying that the truth would be enough to keep Sam from sacrificing everything. “You have no idea how much I wanted to do more than just flirt with you. How badly I wanted you two to get so spitting mad that one of you got a separate room at that no-tell so I could ‘accidentally’ find my way to yours. When it didn’t work out and you thought I was dead? I figured it must’ve been for the best. But then you crossed my path again and your brother was on his way to Hell and I had my shot. I had to take it.”

“Gabriel-”

“Stupid,” the archangel kept on, as if his name hadn’t crossed Sam’s lips. “To think that I could pull you into one of my tricks, watching you day after day after day, and not fall ass over wings in love with you.”

“Then why…?” Sam swallowed, trying to talk through the way his throat had closed around the confession his mate had just made. “Why did you want us to say yes?”

“I’d given up by then.” Unable to help himself, Gabriel pushed his way into the safe enclave of Sam’s body, tucking his back against Sam’s chest and letting Sam curl around him as they found their way back down onto their sides on their bed. “The Seals all broken, Lucifer walking the Earth, even if it wasn’t in you. I figured it was only a matter of time. I was going to lose everything because I’d been idiot enough to let how much I loved you override what I _knew_ would happen if Dean’s soul fell into Lilith’s hands. So I thought: why not just get the trigger pulled now? If the only thing holding up the process was the two of you stubbornly refusing to accept the inevitable, why not try to push you both back onto the chessboard and then beat a path out of town? But…”

“But?” Sam prompted.

“But then there you were again, gorgeous and earnest and shining so bright, and Dean…”

Sam frowned, though he knew the archangel couldn’t see it. “What about Dean?”

Gabriel didn’t answer right away; Sam got a sense of the edge of something private. Something that his mate wasn’t ready to share yet, given the way things stood between he and the elder Winchester. “Anyway, I kept an eye on you both after that. And somehow, just like always, you kept beating the odds. You kept avoiding every trap. And then when Cassi told me that Lucifer was coming after you, that you needed my help…” He shrugged, nestling back into Sam a little further. “I realized there was one last thing I could try… something that I thought maybe… with the way you looked at me after I told you my true name… maybe you’d be receptive to, and I couldn’t bring myself to say no. Not when it meant having a chance to put a cork in things _and_ being with you in the bargain.”

There was a stab of pain from Sam’s end of the bond, and Gabriel rolled in Sam’s arms, framing Sam’s face in his hands and holding the human’s eyes, which were rapidly refilling with tears. “Please, Sam… we’ll find another way. I’ll drag them to the Pit by their wings and you can kick them in. I’ll find a way to put a tracker beacon in the bond and let Cassi kill me so that you can trace my grace back to Dad. Cassi could shame him into coming back and managing my two idiot brothers; I know he could. Or better yet, Dean could; he’s more persuasive than he gives himself credit for. We’ll find a way to turn grace armor into handcuffs, tie them up and throw them in.”

“Gabriel…”

“Please?” Gabriel surged up, kisses raining against Sam’s lips between words. “Please, Sam, don’t… I love you; I’ll do anything you ask; just don’t do this…”

“Okay,” Sam finally conceded. “I won’t, okay? We’ll find another way; I won’t.”

A sob of relief escaped, caught between their mouths, and Sam lost track of everything beyond hands and lips and wings and tight, impossible heat engulfing him, riding him, fingers toying with his piercings and hips grinding against his own until they were both wrung out and saline slick and trembling as they clung to one another.

For the sake of Gabriel’s relief, throbbing across the bond like a heartbeat, Sam did his best to hide how much the concession tasted like despair.


	2. Chapter 2

~ooooOOOoooo~

Dean was still elbow-deep in the Impala’s engine when Sam and Gabriel got back, Castiel sitting beside him on an old metal cooler and passing him the tools he required. “Hey.”

“You two okay?” The elder Winchester barely glanced up from his work, but it was clear from the way he carefully probed across the bonds that Dean was more worried about them than he wanted to let on.

“We’re fine,” Sam told him.

“And?” Dean prompted, drawing back and bracing one hand on the Impala’s hood as he turned to look at his brother. There was an expectant, braced expression on his handsome face, and the shield keeping his anxiety from bleeding across the bond was flickering unstably.

“I promised.” The expression Sam returned was carefully neutral, giving away nothing of his own emotions about having given in to Gabriel’s pleas. “We’ll figure something else out.”

“Good.” Dean tossed the wrench into the toolbox beside Castiel and dropped the Impala’s hood. “You up for a funeral?” Sam’s eyebrows shot up as Dean wiped his hands on a grease rag. “He was your friend before a demon crawled up his ass. Figured you’d be pissed if we didn’t wait for you to come back.”

Taking a deep breath, Sam nodded. “Yeah… we should go do that.”

Dean nodded and stepped over to Castiel, catching his mate’s face in one hand and touching his lips with a brief, gentle kiss. “We’ll be on the other side of the yard.”

“Bobby’s asked that we all sit down as soon as you’re done,” Castiel informed him, reaching up to cover Dean’s hand with his own. “I believe he’s made progress in finding Death, and we’ll likely need to move quickly if the information is good.”

“We’ll put some extra kerosene on him, then,” Dean promised.

As the two brothers began to weave their way through the salvage yard towards Brady’s pyre, Castiel glanced at the oddly-quiet archangel. “You convinced him to change his mind?”

“I think so,” Gabriel replied. His eyes were fixed on the retreating form of his mate, a quiescence in his grace that worried the younger angel. “You think we’ve got a shot if he doesn’t?”

“I think that Lucifer and Michael will be able to predict and counter anything else we might try,” Castiel told him practically. “Sam’s plan is the only one that has any possible element of surprise, and there’s nothing to suggest that he and Adam will also be trapped if it works.”

“It’s also the only one that includes me losing two brothers _and_ the man I love.” Gabriel turned to look at Castiel, his eyes flickering with muted fire. “You weren’t exactly sanguine about the idea of Dean saying ‘yes’ to Michael.”

“Dean had no plan beyond sacrificing himself to the belief that he is the least of us, and that he was unworthy of my love for him,” Castiel countered coolly. “Sam understands his value to all of us, especially to you. But he is also willing to acknowledge that pawns aren’t the only players that must sometimes be placed in danger of being lost in order to win the overall game.”

Unable to answer, Gabriel turned and walked towards the house, leaving Castiel alone in the glowing sunlight.

* * *

Their number had grown too large to be contained in Bobby’s study alone. Dean and Sam sat on the opposite side of Bobby’s desk, with Gabriel on the window seat near Sam and Castiel leaning against the wall to Dean’s left. Abariel and Gamaliel stood in the kitchen, with Aziraphale hovering near the door that led through to the living room. “So,” Dean started, setting Pestilence’s ring spinning on the desktop top. “You’ve got news about Death. Any chance it’s good?”

“Chicago’s about to be wiped off the map,” Bobby informed them baldly. “Storm of the millennium is gonna set off a daisy chain of natural disasters. Three million people are gonna die.”

Castiel quirked an eyebrow as Dean let his head drop onto the desk with a frustrated thunk. “I don’t understand your definition of ‘good news’.”

“Death’s gonna be there,” Bobby clarified. “We get there before he can kickstart the storm, and maybe we can get his ring from him.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dean commented acidly. “Sure. Sounds easy.”

“How’d you piece all this together?” Sam asked. “Chasing omens for the others was easier, but trying to hunt down Death is looking for a needle in a pile of other needles.”

“I had help,” Bobby answered, almost too gruffly.

“Don’t be so modest.” Both boys’ gazes jerked to see Crowley standing behind them in the doorway between the kitchen and the study, casually unscrewing a flask and pouring amber liquid into a glass. “I barely helped at all. Hello, boys.”

“Bobby, what’s he talking about?” Dean demanded.

Everyone was tense as they waited for Bobby’s answer. Gabriel was glaring narrowly at Aziraphale, who returned the archangel’s gaze with calm nonchalance. “Well… world’s ending,” Bobby admitted slowly. “Seems stupid to get precious over one little soul.”

Pandemonium erupted. “You sold your soul?” Sam demanded, aghast.

“Zira!” Gabriel snapped.

“Give it back!” Dean snarled at the same time, rounding up from his chair to advance on Crowley from the front as Gamaliel closed on him from behind.

“I fully intend to,” Crowley informed him, holding up both hands in an appeasing gesture before pointing one finger across the room at Aziraphale. “Or rather, I will once Zira gives it back to me. So it’s more that he just pawned it, really.”

“And in the meantime, I have it in my keeping,” Aziraphale put in, his tone smooth in the face of the rising tempers in the room. “So I’ll thank you to keep those daggers in their sheaths, Gamaliel. Robert was the only one of the humans present who wasn’t protected in case the worst should happen, and we’ve more pressing concerns than whether or not you’re willing to trust my mate.”

Silence settled between them for a moment. Dean sank back into his chair, a quick glance and a nod to Gamaliel signaling that the Power should also back off. Gabriel was the last to simmer down, reserving his anger for Aziraphale rather than Crowley. “If we actually pull this off, Zira, you and I’re having a chat about exactly how gray those wings of yours have gotten.”

Sam reached out and tangled a hand into Gabriel’s, tugging this mate closer. A thought occurred to him suddenly and he glanced back at Bobby. “Did you kiss him? Or… them?”

“Really, Sam?” Dean griped.

“I’m just curious!” Sam protested.

After a moment, Dean’s own curiosity sank in. They both trained expectant gazes on Bobby, and the color rising in his cheeks was enough to belie the denial that was priming itself on his lips.

“I’ll show you the selfies later,” Crowley promised. “But just now, I think Zira’s correct, in that we’ve much bigger fish to fry? Like getting Death’s ring off his bony finger?”

“If we go in force,” Gamaliel reasoned, “we’re more likely to draw attention to ourselves than we are to locate Death. And if there are demons as well as Reapers infesting the city in preparation for the storm, it’ll be worse than what you all faced in Carthage.”

The memory of Jo and Ellen’s deaths, of their miserable failure at stopping Lucifer from completing his ritual, cut Dean so deep that Castiel took a sharp breath, then moved to place a comforting hand on his mate’s shoulder. “It’s not worth the risk. A small strike force, preferably armed with something that will actually be effective against one of the most formidable beings in all Creation, is more likely to succeed.”

“I’ve covered that, too,” Crowley put in. Reaching into his coat, he slowly withdrew a small hand-scythe. “It might not look like much, but it’s one of the Horseman’s very own, and the only way to reap Death is with one of his own Scythes.”

“He has more than one?” Dean asked, eyeing the small weapon cautiously.

“The right tool for the right task,” Crowley observed. “When you’re about to reap three million souls, you need a bloody big blade. You’re not likely to realize the one you use for one-off collections has gone missing until later on, are you?”

“Somebody’s going to notice a contingent of angels moving in, right?” Sam asked. “Just like when we needed to go after Brady?”

“Probably,” Gabriel conceded. “Then again, Death and his reapers have senses unlike any other being in Creation. Bobby here could go in completely alone and they’d know exactly who he is. We’re not going to sneak up on him.”

“Then how do we play this?” Dean asked, standing up and taking the scythe from Crowley. He tested the weight of it in his hand, careful to avoid swinging it. “Just walk up and pick a fight?”

“We could try an unusual stratagem,” Abariel observed mildly, moving towards the doorway behind Crowley. “Approach him with a modicum of respect and see what happens.” Several eyebrows lifted at the suggestion and Abariel shrugged, though it was plain to see the irritation just under the surface. “The other Horsemen have always carried a certain amount of malice in their actions; an almost gleeful excitement at being allowed to wreak havoc on humankind. But Death has existed longer than any of them, and his role in the Apocalypse is only a fraction of his true purpose. Perhaps it might be more fruitful to appeal to his core nature and gain his ring through consent rather than force.”

“More prudent, too,” Gamaliel agreed, “considering he can end all of our lives with a thought.”

“That’s certainly a consideration,” Aziraphale chimed in. “Bullying our way through this one isn’t likely to result in anything but our untimely demises, and then there’ll be no stopping this mess.”

“I’ll go,” Dean offered, before anyone else could pile on. “Try and talk Death into betraying the Devil, and maybe save Chicago while I’m at it. Cas, Crowley: you two are coming along.”

“And the rest of us?” Bobby asked.

“Whether this goes good or bad, we need to know where the final showdown’s gonna happen.” Dean looked at Sam. “You remember where Chuck lives?” Sam nodded. “Good; see if you can’t convince him to use those prophet powers for something useful. If we know what arena’s hosting Celebrity Deathmatch: Apocalypse, maybe we can beat ‘em there.”

“Which means we could get the rings in place for opening the Cage before they even know there’s a problem,” Sam added, suddenly realizing what Dean’s alternative to his plan was.

Gabriel was right there with them. “Set the trap and wait for them to walk in, then close it before they can get past the standard pre-fight threats and bluster.” He threw a glance at Castiel, hope dawning in the form of the first genuine smile he’d worn in days. “You’d better find time to give him a suitable reward for that kind of ingenuity, or I might have to ask for some permissions.”

Dean flushed red, causing Crowley to laugh uproariously while Bobby groused from behind his desk. Sam sent a reproving pulse at Gabriel for teasing, only to find that it wasn’t an entirely unserious proposition. There was a question in Gabriel’s eyes when his gaze turned to meet Sam’s, and Sam’s found himself startled to realize that he knew what his answer would be if the question was ever voiced in earnest.

But that would have to keep until later. There would be time, later, to fully explore the promise of what had been building amongst them.

Presuming that they all made it out of this alive.

* * *

Much as both brothers would’ve preferred driving to their separate destinations, it was acknowledged that time was running out too rapidly for it to be practical. Sam and Gabriel landed outside the Shurley house in Kripke’s Hollow, Ohio not long after noon, and Gabriel watched with something like amusement as Sam squared his shoulders with a long, indrawn breath. “I’ve met prophets before, you know,” he observed bemusedly. “They don’t usually require that much fortitude.”

“It’s always a little… strange, with Chuck,” Sam replied, starting up the walk towards the front door. “Especially since he’s writing about our lives. It’s not exactly comforting to remember that he can, and _has_ , seen everything that’s ever happened to us.”

“You get used to it,” Gabriel replied blandly. “Especially once it gets a couple generations out from him, and the autobiographical stuff starts to get blurred.”

Sam stopped in front of the door to blink down at his mate, who shifted the lollipop from the right side of his mouth to the left and offered a gamine smile as he knocked on the door. “I keep telling myself we’ll have the conversation later,” Sam told him. “But eventually, I really do want to ask you about a few things.”

“We can have all of the ‘de-mystifying the legend’ conversations you want,” Gabriel agreed. “After my brothers get dropped into a box like the Schrodinger's cats they are, our schedules are going to be pretty markedly empty.”

Anything Sam might’ve said to that was lost as the door beside them opened. Chuck took one look at Sam, then Gabriel, and slammed the door closed again after going white as a sheet.

Sam was too busy rolling his eyes to notice Gabriel’s reaction. In half a heartbeat they were inside the house, and Gabriel was following Chuck around his couch, the lollipop stick no longer between his teeth and his expression strangely intent. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” the archangel almost snarled. Chuck stumbled into his desk chair and Gabriel seemed to tower over him, though they were of a height when both were standing. “What are you doing squirrelling yourself away as a human prophet? And where the fuck is He?”

“You know I’m not allowed to tell you,” Chuck answered, eyeing between the fuming archangel and the narrow-eyed hunter that had come to stand nearby. “I wish I could, Gabriel; you know I do. But my hands are tied-”

“Bullshit-”

“Gabe, calm down.” Sam put a hand on the archangel’s shoulder, picking up on the cues that his mate’s grace was rising right along with his temper. “How do you two know each other?”

“I was the one that told his mother she was pregnant,” Gabriel replied flatly, refusing to take his eyes off the almost-cowering prophet.

Sam’s eyes went wide as his meaning sank in, and then he was glaring at Chuck just as fiercely. “I’m really getting tired of people keeping secrets from us,” he growled.

“Look, it’s not what you think-”

“It’s exactly what I think!” Gabriel snapped. “One more way to cop out of fixing the mess He started by pitting them against each other. Never mind the rest of us getting slaughtered on the sidelines. Well, fine then: they’re more bound to obey you than they ever did Him. So no more masquerade. You’re coming with us to where they’re supposed to meet and you’re going to knock some sense into those two once and for all.”

Something in Chuck’s face hardened. Only the fact that he couldn’t have put his feet on the floor without standing on Gabriel’s toes made the archangel step back as Chuck rose from his chair, all traces of anxiety gone from his frame. “No. You think any of this is happening by choice? That We’re _happy_ that this has been drug out for all these centuries?”

“You could’ve stopped it at any time,” Gabriel accused. “Not least of which by stepping in to take over when Dad decided to disappear without a word. That was the last straw for Michael and you know it.”

“And you know as well as I do that these two finally having it out is only the beginning,” Chuck shot back.

Sam’s eyebrows went up even as Gabriel’s expression flickered in recognition. “What the Hell does that mean?” When neither answered, locked in a silent battle of arcane understanding, Sam took another step closer to them. “Gabriel? Chuck?”

“I can’t tell you, Sam.” Chuck finally turned away from Gabriel’s baleful eyes and shouldered his way past the hunter, stepping clear of them and taking a deep, calming breath. “Most of the time, Seeing is a matter of looking down a straight road and knowing what will happen if you keep traveling that road. Most day to day choices are like coming to a fork in the road: you can See what will happen down both forks, and so you know what will happen when one is chosen over another.

“But things like what’s about to happen? Those are like coming to the end of a road at the base of a mountain. Whether you choose right or left, both roads wrap around the mountain and so it’s impossible to See more than a few hundred feet in either direction. The choice you make will irrevocably change the path forever, but you won’t know how until you get to the other side of the mountain.

“And beyond that mountain?” Chuck went on. “There are others, and others. How far apart they are, what happens when you go around them? They’re each their own paradigm shift, and they can only be faced one at a time. The consequences of making one choice affects not only which choices come after, but who faces those choices and what they have with them when the choice has to be made.” He sighed and looked up at Sam with regret written across his face. “Michael and Lucifer have been avoiding this choice as long as they could. But they can’t put it off forever. They have to face each other, or nothing else can move forward. Least of all them.”

“Except one of them is going to die,” Gabriel countered bitterly. “They step onto that field and they’re halfway gone. You can make them choose something else; you know you can.”

“But that’s the point, Gabriel: I can’t!” Chuck snapped. “You know better than anyone that there’s a difference between choosing and being made to take an action. They have to _choose_ this time. There’s no way around it anymore.”

Sam took a long, steadying breath. “We have a plan to try and stop them from choosing to fight,” he told Chuck. “We just need to know where the meeting ground is.”

“It’s in Stull Cemetery,” Chuck told him. “Cursed boneyard outside your old hometown. But the thing with the rings?” he added. “You won’t surprise them with it. They can both sense the Horsemen’s rings and they both know the words to deactivate the spell that opens the Cage. They’ll see it coming, and they’ll cut you all down long before anyone can say the words.”

Gabriel’s expression turned faintly sick. “It’s our only chance.”

“No, it’s not,” Chuck told him, his expression implacable. “And what’s more, you know it. It’s time for you to stop digging in your heels trying to avoid the inevitable, Gabriel. The destruction of the plain cities will look like a controlled demolition compared to what will happen if this choice doesn’t go ahead. We’re not just out of time leading up to the choice. We’re out of time for the choice to be made at all.”

“What happens if it doesn’t happen?” Sam asked, hoping the question wasn’t as circular as it sounded.

“Even refusing to make a choice is a kind of choice,” Gabriel told him, his voice strained with reluctance to accept what Chuck was saying. “What my dear mystic brother is saying is that if the choice is derailed again, it’ll be one time too many, and nobody will be able to control what happens next.”

Chuck nodded slowly, and Sam glanced between them for a moment. “So… there’s nothing else you can tell us?” he pressed carefully. “Nothing that will stop this from happening?”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Chuck told him. “I really am. But Lucifer and Michael have to finally face each other. They have to deal with the betrayals that they both committed against the other. Whatever choices they make on that field will decide how the world, and everyone in it, moves forward.”

“And if they choose to fight?” Sam asked.

“Then one of them will have to die,” Chuck confirmed. “And whichever one lives will affect the shape of reality for generations to come.”

* * *

They landed in a warehouse district: Crowley blinking in seconds before Castiel arrived with Dean’s hand clasped tightly in his own. The sky was overcast and darkening, the wind blowing fiercely even for the Windy City. Dean was trying to cover his disorientation from the moment they landed, but the pulse of stabilizing grace Castiel sent him through the bond made it obvious that he wasn’t hiding much from his mate at the moment.

Crowley was glancing around the area, his normal nonchalance firmly in place. Dean wished there was a way to tell whether or not it was as affected as his own confidence. “Let's stop for pizza,” the demon remarked off-handedly.

“Are you kidding?” Dean asked incredulously, his eyes flicking up towards the menacing sky.

“Just heard it was good, is all,” Crowley demurred placatingly. “Up ahead: big, ugly building. Ground zero. Horseman's stable, if you will. He's in there.”

“How do you know?” Dean demanded.

“Have you met me?” Crowley challenged. “ ‘Cause I know. Also, the block is squirming with reapers.”

Dean glanced at Castiel for confirmation, who nodded. “Dozens of them, all standing attendant on Death’s orders. But that doesn’t mean Death himself is in there.”

“Fine, then,” Crowley huffed. “I’ll be right back.”

As the demon blinked out, Dean let himself grip Castiel’s hand a bit tighter. “You still good with this plan?”

“Abariel’s reasoning is sound,” Castiel agreed. “And Death has always been… inscrutable. Even to angels.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Dean grumbled.

“Boy, is my face red.” Dean was startled enough by the demon’s reappearance behind them that he jumped, releasing Castiel’s hand as he spun and drew the demon-killing blade. “Your inamorata’s right: Death's not in there.”

“You want to cut the cute and get to the part where you tell us where he is?” Dean snapped. “It’s not like this town’s got time for you to screw us around for laughs.”

“Sorry,” Crowley shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean: you don't know?” Castiel growled. “The spell you provided was supposed to supply Death’s precise location.”

“Signs pointed!” Crowley protested. “I-I’m just as shocked as you.”

“Bobby sold his soul for this!” Dean snarled, advancing on the demon as his patience with the game ran out.

“Relax! All deals are soul back or store credit.” Crowley took a step back even as Castiel caught Dean’s elbow.

“Millions, Crowley!” Dean reminded him. “Millions of people are about to die any minute, and you’re standing here cracking wise.”

“True,” Castiel agreed in a tone so unexpectedly mild that it drew Dean’s focus completely off the retreating demon. “So I strongly suggest we get out of here.”


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

“So, what?” Dean demanded as Castiel started walking. Crowley had fallen into step behind them, but Dean had hardly noticed in his shock over Castiel’s declaration of retreat. “Call in a bomb threat? A thousand bomb threats? I mean, how the hell am I supposed to get three million people out of Chicago in the next ten minutes?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Castiel replied. “In their entire history, no human settlement endangered by a natural disaster has ever been fully or effectively evacuated. If this storm breaks, millions will die.”

“Then what the fuck are we doing? Cas!” Dean grabbed at the angel’s shoulder as he got in front of him. Castiel easily shook off the grip, meeting Dean’s panicked gaze calmly. “This is the plan, Cas; we don’t pull this off and nothing else, not even Sammy agreeing to be a prom dress, is gonna help! So knock off the cryptic angel shit and talk to me! What are we doing?”

“Look around,” Castiel replied calmly. He watched Dean make an abortive gesture of confusion before doing so, gauging the moment when consternation fell away and his mate realized that, in the instant he’d grabbed Castiel, the angel had shifted their location by a few blocks. “You needn’t remind me of the plan, Dean. I’m fully aware of its details. And you’re correct that Crowley was playing games back there, but not in the manner you think.”

Dean shot a dirty glare at Crowley, who shrugged in response, no longer cowed by the hunter’s ire. “What’re you saying: he really does know where Death is?”

“I’m saying that we should stop for pizza,” Castiel informed him, nodding at a tiny pizzeria storefront across the street.

Following his mate’s gaze, Dean looked at the restaurant windows. It looked practically deserted, though that wasn’t unusual given the weather and the lack of human workers in the district as a result. “He’s in there?”

“Death has a bit of a reputation,” Crowley told him mildly. “Extended missions that he has to take care of personally? He always samples the best of the local cuisine.”

“Are you telling me that Death is a fucking _foodie_?” Dean’s eyes boggled as he looked from demon to angel. “Man, I need to find a new line of work.”

“We can discuss you quitting the life to become a barista after the end of the world is averted,” Crowley teased. “For now, off you pop.”

Dean threw a face at Crowley and then turned to Castiel. “Are you coming?”

“I will stand guard,” Castiel told him. “In case any demons besides Crowley decide that this would be an opportune moment.” He took Dean’s right wrist in his left hand, kissing his mate as he relieved Dean of the demon-killing blade with his right. “Being able to use things like this is not your only strength,” he murmured gently. “Remember that, Dean. You’ll be fine.”

Swallowing, Dean nodded, pressing a kiss of his own before turning and crossing the street to enter the pizzeria through the front door.

Inside, bodies lay everywhere. Human lives cut short, their corpses sprawled out where they’d fallen. Dean had seen such tableaus of loss before: many bloodier, few with this many casualties. Neither the employees nor the patrons had survived. Dean counted it a small mercy that, because of the district and the time of day, there were no children among the victims.

Never in all his years of stepping into such scenes had the perpetrator also been there in plain sight.

Seated at a table in the center of the dining room was a man. He might’ve been entirely ordinary: clad in a long black overcoat, white shirt and black necktie in a neat Windsor knot. His hair was black, carefully styled, longer than Dean’s but shorter than Sam’s. A cane of sleek ebony, capped and handled with silver, rested against the table within easy reach. Everything about him was elegant; to a casual observer, he might’ve been a man who, having been raised in wealth and stature, was sitting down to a meal in a quiet local establishment on the strength of the food alone, rather than the poshness of the room and settings in which one ate it.

But even a casual observer would’ve noticed, had they looked long enough, the alien stillness that imbued every precise movement the man made. The silence in those deep eyes even when you weren’t looking directly into them. This was neither man nor beast. Neither killer nor predator nor even uncaring bystander.

This was Death.

“Join me, Dean.” Even the voice was cool as marble, worn smooth not by a polishing hand but by wind and rain and the march of uncounted centuries. “The pizza’s delicious.” When Dean took only a careful step forward, his normal bravado having completely deserted him, Death barely flicked a glance up at him before chewing and swallowing another bite. “Sit down. It took you long enough to find me. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“I gotta say: I have mixed feelings about that,” Dean confessed, moving to sit in the chair across from Death himself. “S-so... is this the part where… where you kill me?”

He was inwardly flinching at the question even as it found its way out of his mouth. Still, it gained the complete attention of the being across from him, whose hands paused in their rhythm of cutting another mouthful from the slice of pizza on his plate as he looked up to meet Dean’s open expression of trepidation with indifference as smooth as glass. “You have an inflated sense of your importance,” Death told him baldly.

After more than a year of being told that the fate of the world hinged on his decisions, actions, and willingness or lack thereof to comply with the Fate that had been ordered for him, the statement was, oddly, the most reassuring thing Dean had ever heard.

“To a thing like me…” Death continued, reaching for his water glass and taking a somewhat noisy drag through the straw, “A thing like you, well… think how you'd feel if a bacterium sat at your table and started to get snarky.” Lightning cracked outside, thunder so close on its heels that there was no mistaking the storm being directly over their heads. The flashes lit across Death’s face, and Dean tried to tell himself that it was only his still-panicky mind conjuring the image of bleached bone that the light seemed to reveal instead of perfectly ordinary skin. “This is one little planet, in one tiny solar system, in a galaxy that’s barely out of its diapers. I'm _old_ , Dean. Very old. So I invite you to contemplate how insignificant I find you.”

There were far too many implications of that statement for Dean to find any immediate response. Just the idea that Death had been to other planets, in other galaxies, and the implicit conformation that Earth was not, in fact, the only planet to have ever spawned any kind of sentient life, was enough to keep Dean’s mind boggled.

Taking advantage of his guest’s gobsmacked silence, Death took up the serving spatula in the deep dish pan between them and lifted a slice onto the place setting in front of Dean. “Eat,” he instructed calmly. He watched Dean recognize that the place setting had been laid explicitly as if Death had been waiting for him, then take up the silverware, cut off a mouthful and eat it, the instinct of humans to find comfort in food counterbalancing how uncomfortably quickly the horizons of Dean’s understanding were being expanded. “Good, isn’t it?”

Dean gave a careful shrug of agreement as Death settled back into his own meal. The normalcy of the moment was a stark, absurd contrast to the truth of the being he was sharing it with, but it restored Dean’s ability to think past that, which had probably, Dean realized, been Death’s intention from the start. “Well, I gotta ask,” he began carefully, reaching for some semblance of reciprocal civility. “How old are you?”

“As old as God,” Death replied candidly. “Maybe older; neither of us can remember anymore. Life, death, chicken, egg… regardless: at the end, I’ll reap Him, too.”

“God?” Dean echoed, shock once again threatening to zero out his focus. “You’ll reap... God?”

“Oh, yes.” Death paused to look up at him as lightning once again flickered through the windows, his face again showing bleached bone through the glamour of humanity. “God will die, too, Dean.” He dropped Dean’s gaze to take another bite of his pizza. “Especially if His sister has Her way. But that’s a family squabble for another decade.”

Dean’s fork clattered against his plate as it slipped from momentarily nerveless fingers. “Well…” he managed, searching for anything to say in response. “This is just _way_ above my pay grade.”

“Just a bit,” Death replied, a touch of his own snark seeping through.

There was a pulse of reassurance from Castiel, and the twin sensations of his mate’s faith and recognizing that Death was capable of sarcasm that finally pushed Dean back into his thinking mind. He retrieved the Scythe that Crowley had stolen and set it down on the table between them. “I believe that belongs to you.”

Death’s eyes flicked over it, and a moment later it was gone from the table, presumably returned to its proper place in Death’s armory. “Thanks for returning that. The little demon who took it is amusing enough, but one day he’ll overestimate his own cleverness a bit too much.”

“Yeah, he’s a pain in the ass,” Dean agreed. “You said you’d been wanting to talk to me. What about?”

“Getting the leash around my neck _off_ ,” Death told him, the frank openness of the statement a stark contrast to the constant double-speech Dean was used to from supernatural beings. “Lucifer has me bound to him by way of some unseemly little spell. He has me where he wants, when he wants. That's why I couldn't go to you, why I had to wait for _you_ to catch up. He has made me his weapon: hurricanes, floods, raising the dead…” A touch of impatience bled through, of true rancor at the sheer disrespect he felt Lucifer’s actions had displayed. “I’m more powerful than you can process, and I’m enslaved to a bratty child having a temper tantrum.”

“And you want us to... unbind you?” Dean guessed, wondering how it would even be possible. They knew almost nothing about the spell Lucifer had enacted at Carthage, but maybe with some luck and a last-minute, Hail-Mary stall for time...

“There’s your ridiculous bravado again,” Death returned, a tinge of exasperation in his tone this time. “Of course you can’t; only Lucifer’s death can do that.” Lifting his right hand, Death watched Dean’s eyes focus on the silver ring he wore, the white stone almost glowing in the stormlight. “I understand you want this.” When Dean managed a meager ‘yeah’, Death drew it from his finger. “I’m inclined to give it to you. With this in your hands instead of on mine, the bullets are removed from Lucifer’s gun, and you have the instrument that your intrepid little plan requires.”

He wanted to reach for it. To snatch it from Death’s fingers and run. Something held Dean in place; not only the instinct to protect the people slated for death because of the incipient storm, but a glimmer of understanding that the primordial force across from him was playing a far deeper game than anyone else currently on the board. “What about… Chicago?” Dean asked carefully.

“I suppose it can stay,” Death answered, a faint flicker of amusement under the words. “I like the pizza.” A brief pause, the ring still held out like bait for a trap Dean sensed but couldn’t see. “There are conditions to my giving you this, you know.”

“Like?” Dean asked cautiously.

“You have to get your brother’s mate to back down.”

Dean blinked, startled. “What?”

“By now, your brother and his archangel mate know the same thing I’m going to tell you: just having the rings isn’t going to be enough. Lucifer is too wary in his current vessel, crumbling around him though it is, for him to miss a trap laid by the one he wants. But if he’s wearing your brother, his natural vanity of prowess will overcome his caution.” Those pitch eyes grew intent, holding Dean’s with an almost mesmerizing quality. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You think he’ll be easier to get the drop on if he’s wearing Sammy,” Dean confirmed, somehow feeling like he was missing something regardless. “Problem is: if he’s wearing Sammy, he’ll know about the plan-”

“You only think you have a plan,” Death cut in. “You don’t. All you really have is your brother. He’s the one that can stop Lucifer. The _only_ one.”

“What, you think-”

“I know,” Death interrupted again, his tone bearing a finality that only he could invoke. “But the bonds the two of you have sealed with your angels go both ways. Gabriel’s name means ‘God is my Strength’ for a reason. If your brother tries to give up his bond and the archangel won’t let go, things will get… very messy.”

There was a promise in that word that had Dean gulping despite himself, taking a drink from the water glass at his place setting to wet a throat suddenly dry from fear of the implied consequences.

“So I need a promise,” Death went on. “You're not only going to stop standing in the way of what your brother already knows is the only way to win, but you’re going to talk the archangel he’s bound to into letting it happen.” He extended his right hand, the ring held out to Dean. Temptation glinting within easy reach. “Well... do I have your word?”

Dean could feel his lower lip tremble, a syllable that had come to represent disaster trying to form on his tongue. To say it meant promising to let Sam once again sacrifice everything he valued for the sake of the life they’d apparently been born to lead. Meant standing by doing nothing while Sam broke the bond that ensured his safety even from death and threw himself into the maw of the beast.

Meant abandoning the only mission he’d known since he’d been five years old, and risking not only the world but everything that had ever meant anything to him on the chance that somehow, Sam could find some tiny, well-guarded chink in Lucifer’s armor in time to stop Armageddon from being played out.

And hoping against both hope and experience that somehow Sam would come out safely on the other side once he did.

Everyone was counting on him to get the job done. The idea that, in these final hours, the responsibility to see it through would be shifted onto Sam’s shoulders was so alien that Dean didn’t know how to reconcile it. It had to be him, didn’t it? He was the elder brother, Michael’s scion. In the end, no matter how many people laid the blame at Sam’s door for opening the final Seal and unleashing Lucifer upon the world, it had been Dean’s hands that had shed the blood and unlocked the first. If it hadn’t been for him, none of the rest could have followed. In the end, his share of the blame was the greatest, if not the heaviest to bear.

But Death was waiting, and the world with him, to see if Dean could delegate the most crucial mission to someone other than himself. If he could take on the role of commander rather than common soldier, and send one of his men to what was most likely his death. No matter that the one to be sent was his brother. No matter that all his life, his ultimate mission had been to keep his brother safe at any cost. Those had been his father’s orders. Now, he was expected to defy those orders, because that was the only way to preserve the lives of countless thousands that had no idea what was at stake.

In a flash of recognition, Dean saw the pattern fall into place. Understood the test at last, and even as a part of him rebelled against it, accepted that there was more than one way for this to end even if Sam said yes. And in those possible outcomes, a defiant spark of hope. “Okay, yeah,” he finally agreed, extending his hand to accept the ring. “Yes.”

Death had watched him carefully, placing the ring in Dean’s palm when acceptance finally came. “That had better be ‘yes’, Dean. You know you can’t cheat death.” He returned to his pizza as Dean’s hand closed on the ring and slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. “Now, would you like the instruction manual?”

“Since this was Gabriel’s bright idea in the first place,” Dean observed dryly, digging into his own pizza with a hunger that surprised him now that the moment had passed, “I was kinda hoping he had it.”

“He’s a clever little creature,” Death remarked. “And very likely does. But he’s going to be otherwise occupied when it comes down to the moment, so it’s better if you know it, too.” Dean’s eyebrows went up in question, but Death took advantage of Dean having the manners to not talk with his mouth full and pressed on. “The rings were created to act as one when brought together, and so when you place them in proximity, they will draw together and fuse into a single object. If you cast the fused rings against any surface and say the words: ‘bvtmon tabges babalon’; the portal into the Cage will open. Any being of celestial origin will be drawn into it for so long as it remains active.”

“It doesn’t close on its own?” Dean asked, swallowing hard.

Death shook his head. “No. It can only be closed by repeating the spell except you add ‘chdr’ to the beginning.”

“Bvtmon… tabges… babalon,” Dean sounded, testing the unfamiliar words in his mouth.

Death glanced up, one elegant eyebrow slightly lifted. “With diction like that, you’d better tell that mate of yours that we’ll be here for a while.”

Instinct had Dean throwing a face at Death before he could think better of it.

Death, contrary to all expectation, smiled in response.

* * *

By the time they got back, Sam and Gabriel had returned as well. Even without the bonds, Dean understood the bleak expression carved into Sam’s face. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“It’s going down at Stull Cemetery,” Sam told him. “High noon, day after tomorrow.”

“He give you anything else?” Dean asked, glancing at the way Gabriel was building himself an ice cream sundae in the kitchen, attempting to look like he was ignoring everything else around him and failing completely.

“He’s pretty adamant that the ambush plan won’t work.” Sam glanced at Gabriel for a moment, then back at Dean. “He said that Michael and Lucifer have put off making a choice for too long, and that they have to face each other and deal with the fact that they betrayed each other now. If they put it off even one more time, it’s gonna destabilize things even worse than if the Apocalypse is allowed to go ahead.”

“Yeah, Death had a few things to say about the whole mess himself,” Dean told him, shrugging off his coat and letting out a deep sigh of resignation.

“But get this,” Sam added. “The way Chuck talked about it… it was like he was saying that the two of them facing each other doesn’t have to be a fight. That they can choose to fight, or they can choose something else.” Dean nodded and Sam pushed up from his chair, moving closer to his brother. “Dean, what if everybody’s been wrong all this time? What if there’s a chance that they meet and it doesn’t turn into a fight to the death?”

“I’d say it pretty heavily depends on Michael’s ability to think beyond following orders from his dear old Dad and Lucifer’s ability to decide that getting an apology is better than taking his vengeance out of Michael’s hide,” Dean replied, his tone acid. “And I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that those two are capable of that. Hell, Sam, you said it yourself: even we used to just put bandaids over the bullet wounds and pretend they weren’t there. Those two’ve been doing the same thing since humans were first made; I’m not holding out a lot of hope that they’re gonna change their spots now.”

“So what do we do?” Sam asked.

For a moment, Dean couldn’t answer. The ring Death had given him was heavy in his pocket, a reminder of the promise extracted from him as compensation for it. “We stick to the plan,” Dean finally told him, his stomach churning as he took the out. “Figure out the rest as we go along.”

Nodding, the excitement draining back out of him, Sam went into the kitchen to join Gabriel at the table. Dean watched them sharing the ice cream sundae for a moment before retrieving the other rings from Bobby’s safe and slipping outdoors.

Castiel was briefing Bobby at the table by the repair garage, both of them looking up at Dean as he approached. “Check it out,” he told them, placing the rings in two separate groups on the table. Of their own volition, the rings drew towards one another like a group of magnets, clustering into a three-leafed clover formation around War’s ring in the center.

Bobby’s eyebrows shot up in interest. “So Death told you how to operate those?” he asked. “The whole deal? Or are we supposed to figure out how to activate them on our own?”

“No, he gave me the whole playbook,” Dean answered, sitting down beside Castiel. “Of course, I got bigger problems now.”

“Really?” Bobby shot Castiel a quick glance; the angel hadn’t alluded to any problems with the mission before now. “Like?”

Dean hesitated, giving a sideways glance at his mate. “What do you think Death does to people who lie to his face?”

“Nothing good,” Bobby mused. “What’d you say?”

“That I was cool with Sam giving it up to the Devil,” Dean confessed, watching Castiel’s eyes widen in alarm. “And that I’d get the Trickster on board.”

“You cannot go back on your word,” Castiel admonished. “Dean, the consequences even if we succeed… even our mating bond may not be able to protect you.”

“Besides,” Bobby offered, “if Death thinks Sam needs to say yes to being the dress in order to pull the plug on Armageddon, maybe there’s something to this we shouldn’t dismiss quite so fast.”

“Yeah, but... I mean, of course he'd say that,” Dean protested. “He works for Lucifer, after all.”

“Except Death wasn’t created to serve Lucifer,” Castiel countered. “He’s a primordial being that pre-exists almost everything else in creation. I see nothing disingenuous about his wanting to be free of the spell that binds him to Lucifer’s orders, and helping us to stop Lucifer from prevailing on the battlefield is his best chance of achieving that.”

“Seriously, Cas?” Dean edged away from his mate just enough to shoot him a disbelieving, almost betrayed expression. “What happened to you being on board with finding a way around this?”

“Don’t get snippy with him,” Bobby interjected. “Not when he’s got a perfectly valid point. Now, look: we been running ourselves ragged trying to find a way to pull the plug on the Apocalypse, or even to just slow it down, but the best we’ve managed to do is keep things down to a dull roar. We can’t keep playing it safe at this point; if we want to derail this, we’re gonna have to start accepting that we could all lose the skin we’ve got in the game. Now you and your brother’ve both seen your fair share of dangerous situations and come out ahead even when nobody thought you could. Hell, Sam’s been running into burning buildings right alongside you since he was... what? Twelve?”

“Pretty much,” Dean conceded, letting Castiel take gentle hold of his left hand while his right toyed with the combined rings.

“Then you know that if anyone can find a way beat the Devil from the inside out, it’s Sam. Hell, he’s the Devil’s perfect Vessel, which means he’s gotta be the only one who has a chance of understanding the bastard well enough to figure out his weak spot, and he’s certainly the last one that the Devil’l see coming. Given how fast this is coming to a head, that’s the best ambush we could ask for.” Bobby paused, letting the truth of the matter sink in. “So I got to ask, Dean: what exactly are you afraid of? Losing against two mule-headed archangels bent on tearing each other apart instead of talking things out? Or losing your brother because beating the game means that he gets burned out in the bargain?”

“What I wanna know is who the fuck said I can’t be worried about both at the same time,” Dean growled. “I can’t want to beat the Devil _and_ have my family intact to enjoy it when it’s over?”

“You can,” Bobby agreed. “That don’t mean it’s possible.”

Dean was quiet for a long moment. “Time was,” he finally admitted, “I would’ve said the same thing. That nobody gets everything they wish for, and guys like us have a worse shot at it than most on account of what we do. And after the Pit…” He trailed off; Castiel squeezed his hand reassuringly, neither he nor Bobby willing to press Dean to finish the sentence. “But these past few months, I really started to think it might happen. That what Sammy pitched when Lucifer pulled the stunt that ended up with us all angel-married was possible. We get down to the eleventh hour and find out it’s not?” He swallowed, looking up at Bobby and feeling like he had when he’d begged the older man to not tell Sam about the crossroads deal he’d made. “I’d just like to know the point, is all. The whole giveth-and-taketh-away bit gets a little tired when you never get to find out the reasons that are supposed to explain it.”

“Answers seldom come when you expect them, beloved,” Castiel told him. “At least, the truly important ones, anyway.”

Bobby reached out and gently took the combined rings out from under Dean’s fingers, toying with them in his own hands for a long moment. “Listen… what this has shaped up into? I got a fair idea of how bad it is in your head right now tryin’ to face it… you and the Trickster. But you’re too good of a man to just let thousands of innocent folks get slaughtered for the sake of keeping your brother out of the firing line. Convincing the archangel might take some doing, but…” He held up the conjoined rings. “You’ve done more with less.

“Take some time,” Bobby continued, pushing up from the table and pocketing the rings to be hidden away until needed. “Get your head around the idea however you have to. But high noon Thursday’s not coming slower for any of us, and when it gets here, we can’t afford to be sitting in a corner wishing life was fair.”

As he turned to walk away, Dean couldn’t stop himself. “How’d you do it, Bobby?” When the older hunter turned around, Dean met his eyes and clarified. “How’d you not hesitate the first time you had to kill Karen?”

For the barest moment, Bobby almost looked like he was too angry over the implications of the question to respond. The moment passed, like a deep breath being let out, and Bobby shrugged. “Because if I’d hesitated over my pa, he’d’ve killed me. Lessons like that tend to stick when you’re twelve.”

“Your dad got possessed?” The idea startled Dean; he’d always assumed that Bobby’s first exposure to the supernatural had come when Karen had been taken for a vessel.

Bobby just smiled indulgently at that. “Just a mean sumbitch,” he told Dean, knowing the rest would be easy to guess. He turned and walked back into the house without another word, leaving Dean and Castiel alone beneath the steel awning.

Closing his eyes against that revelation, Dean found himself turning and burrowing into Castiel’s shoulder. By now, there was no question or hesitancy; he knew even as he started the motion that Castiel’s arms would open and envelop him, the angel’s embrace now the one safe place he had. “I have to do this, don’t I?” he asked, his voice small and overflowing with pain.

“You already know,” the seraph told him gently.

“I can’t,” Dean finally protested, his fingers digging into the trench coat that the angel was almost never without unless they were in private. “I can’t do this, Cas; they can’t make me.”

“You’re right that they can’t make you,” Castiel replied, leaning his head against Dean’s and holding on as tightly as his mate needed. “But you’re wrong. You are strong enough to do this. And I will be right there beside you while you do, ready to help you pick up the pieces if something goes wrong.”

The reassurance broke something in Dean, and Castiel’s wing-shadows swept out around him, muffling the sound as Dean mourned a loss that, despite all assurances that it was only a possibility, he believed to be inevitable.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize to everyone that’s been waiting for this fic to resume posting. I don’t want to go into too much detail because the situation is profoundly triggery, but suffice to say that I had an encounter two weeks ago which ultimately escalated to my needing to have someone arrested for stalking. I’ve been concentrating everything since it happened on making myself and my home safter, and I have finally gotten to a point where my life can begin to return to normal.
> 
> I appreciate all of you so much. Just knowing that there are people out there who enjoy my work has been a source of great comfort to me in the past couple of weeks, and it is my sincere pleasure to resume posting in this ‘verse.

~ooooOOOoooo~

It was a rare moment to find the archangel not glued to Sam’s side. His brother had convinced Gabriel to let him run into town for some groceries and other supplies, and the Trickster was inspecting Bobby’s panic room… likely from a need to find something to occupy himself rather than out of any genuine curiosity about the structure. “Hey.”

“You know, Bobb-o really built an impressive little fish tank here,” Gabriel complimented, his tone lighter than Dean might’ve expected. He wasn’t sure if the fact that he could tell it was forced rather than genuine mirth was the result of the bonds they all shared, or just of knowing that what hung over all of their heads likely made laity impossible even for the irrepressible Trickster. “Screw the Cage; I say we just bump up the seals on this baby and lock my idiot older brothers in here for a couple thousand years. Singer won’t mind, right?”

Shrugging, Dean offered the archangel a beer as he sat down on the cot hung from the wall. Gabriel declined, instead snapping an orange cocktail capped with green foam and sporting an umbrella atop a long Silly Straw into his hand before joining his brother-in-law. “What the Hell are those things you’re always drinking, anyway?”

“Neon Carrot,” Gabriel answered, removing the umbrella and taking a drag off the straw. “Think Long Island Iced Tea, except orange. Wanna try it?”

“Maybe another time,” Dean demurred. He was admittedly curious, but it would have to keep.

Gabriel eyed him carefully and sighed, taking another long drink before responding. “Traitor.”

“It’s not like I wanted to run outta options on the menu.” Dean took a long drink from his beer, wishing the alcohol content was enough to make him feel something anymore. _*God, I’m getting old.*_ “You got any brilliant, last-minute ideas to avoid this?”

“I was kinda hoping you did,” Gabriel confessed. “You and Sam have a habit of surprising me, but Sam’s locked into the idea, no matter what he promised me. I figured if anybody had a last minute Hail Mary, it’d be you.”

For long, uncounted minutes, the two people that loved Sam Winchester best in the world sat side by side, drinking and taking solace in their shared senses of doom. The companionship that had formed between them was at once so strange and so completely normal that Dean finally could only shake his head. “You ever think we’d end up here?” he asked. “Back when we first ran into you pretending to be a janitor?”

“Not for an instant,” Gabriel replied, dragging a reflexive laugh out of Dean. “I was gonna have some laughs pitting you against each other, maybe fuck Sam stupid in a closet if I could get you both separated long enough, and then beat a path out of town.”

Dean let out another chuckle. “Right from the start, huh?”

“You’ve seen your brother,” Gabriel returned, one eyebrow quirked. “Reminds me of the Titans, back in the day. Gods, but it was fun climbing them like trees.” Dean choked on his beer and Gabriel gave a delighted chortle. “Not that you’re not climbable yourself, mind you.”

It was a surprise for Dean to feel himself relaxing into the flirt, rather than shutting it down. “So why Sammy?”

A moment of consideration. Another. And then Gabriel’s drink was gone with a final slurp and the archangel was on his knees facing Dean, his right hand swinging for Dean’s face. Dean’s left hand had caught his at the wrist seconds later, grip tight enough to grind the bones of a lesser being.

Their eyes held, tension taut as razor wire between them. The undercurrent that had always been between them flared to life in their veins, and Dean’s startled anger transmuted into something else: darker, lower. Dangerous. He could feel every cell of the smooth skin in his grip, the unnatural pulse that beat under his palm. The way those golden eyes dilated… inviting him deeper… inviting… almost begging for it… 

And then the archangel was breaking his grip as easily as shaking off a spill of water, and settling back down onto the cot with Dean’s half-drunk beer neatly plucked from the hunter’s right hand. “ _That’s_ why,” Gabriel answered at last. “There wasn’t enough time then, and you’ve got Cassi now.”

 

Ruthlessly suppressing what the archangel had woken, Dean cracked open the second beer he’d brought with him and nearly drained it in one swallow. “You can be a real sonuvabitch; you know that?”

“Lots of angels out there were made to make people feel better,” Gabriel gamely agreed. “Archangels, every one of us: we were made to be something… else.”

Dean sobered a little at that, remembering what Castiel had told him only a few days after they’d first met. That Gabriel had hidden for centuries by wrapping himself in the guise of a Norse god, and doing things in the process that obviously didn’t go against his nature.

The silence between them finally proved too much, and Gabriel hopped off the cot after he drained the beer he’d stolen. “You’d better hope the Cage does spit the humans back,” he declared, refusing to look back at Dean as he said it. “Because if this works but the Cage takes them too?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Dean said, standing up and coming to stand behind the archangel’s back. “The nightmares I already have are bad enough.” Gabriel made a derisive sound even as he nodded. When Dean placed his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders, attempting reassurance, the archangel didn’t shrug them off. “After… if this works… what happens between you and Sam?”

“Some spectacular ‘holy fuck we won’ sex, I hope,” Gabriel quipped.

He tried to leave as he said it, but the grip Dean had on his shoulders tightened, stopping him. “You know what I mean.”

Slowly, Gabriel turned and looked up at Dean, taking in serious green-blue eyes and perfectly sculpted face, and scarred, battered soul beneath it all. So many scars, and yet here he was, looking for one more to add to the collection… or at least, to add it sooner rather than later and hope that the wound wouldn’t be as deep if he took it early enough.

Gabriel knew how he felt.

“The bond is supposed to be permanent,” Gabriel told him honestly. “A promise to belong to each other that supersedes the claim that another angel might have on the Vessel. They’re both a kind of love, you see, but they can’t both exist at the same time or it’ll tear the human apart.” A demand for a cut to the chase was forming on Dean’s lips, and Gabriel held up a hand to stop him. “Being a Vessel also permanently changes the human; carrying both soul and grace that way… there are slivers of grace that get left behind, like echoes of memory, so the angel can come back and use them again and again and again if necessary.”

Realization sank in, and Dean felt sick: both from the understanding of what he’d almost cost himself and Castiel, and from what this was about to cost his brother and Gabriel. “You’re saying… never…?”

“We can keep having as much sex as either of us can stand for as long as Sam lives,” Gabriel confirmed, no longer even attempting to make the words sound light or sardonic. “But once he breaks the bond, it’s gone. Forever.”

Before Dean could begin to process the new rip of grief that assailed him through the bond, a mirror of his own, the archangel disappeared, leaving only the flutter of great wings in his wake.

* * *

It wasn’t until after Sam returned, the makings for a surf-and-turf dinner in tow, that Dean realized where Gabriel had gone. The archangel was ordering Gamaliel and Castiel around like sous chefs, leaving Sam empty-handed between the Chevelle and the Impala and looking at Dean more nervously than he’d been the night he’d confessed to having gotten an acceptance letter from Stanford. “I take it he told you,” Dean offered. “About my being on board with the whole ‘yes’ plan.”

“That's what he said.” Sam closed the distance between them almost cautiously, unsure of how to approach the topic after so much resistance. “To be honest, it’s the last thing I thought you’d ever say, let alone get Gabriel to agree that we don’t have a better option.”

“Not gonna lie,” Dean said, hopping up onto the hood of the Impala. “It goes against every fiber I got. You remember what I showed you, the night Adam got resurrected?”

Sam nodded, a lump in his throat as he joined Dean on the hood. It had been perhaps the single most vulnerable moment Dean had ever shared with him, and having shared those emotions, even just at the edges, had healed wounds Sam hadn’t even remembered carrying. “Not the kind of thing you just forget.”

“Yeah, well…” Dean cleared his throat, glancing at the activity in the house before meeting Sam’s gaze. Those sherry hazel eyes were serious now, as they so often were, but there was just a hint of fear in the corners of them. Just enough to make Dean want to tear down the vaults of Heaven itself to keep Sam from being required to do what everything in Creation was telling them needed to be done. “Maybe trying to protect you from all this, after everything… maybe I’m just treating you like a kid. Maybe me letting you go in there is supposed to help me grow up some myself; I don’t know. Putting away childish things and all that shit. And what’s worse is that even if you do it, I don't know if we’ve got a snowball’s chance. But I do know that, out of everyone on the planet, including Cas, there’s no one I’d trust with our last shot at stopping this over you.”

Sam reached out, pulling Dean across the hood of the Impala into a fierce hug. “I won’t let you down.”

“You could never.” Dean returned the hug, then pulled back just enough to see Sam’s face. “Sam, even if this works… even if we win and we get you and Adam back safe… did he tell you? About the mating bond?”

The thought tied a knot in Sam’s throat even as he managed a nod. “I know… but I can’t afford to be selfish, Dean. I can’t let that be the thing that stops me; not with the world at stake because of something I did.”

“ _We_ did,” Dean insisted. He watched Sam’s eyes widen at that, wondering if it was the first time he’d admitted in Sam’s presence that he shared the blame for Lucifer’s ultimate freedom from the Cage. “And if this is what you want, then it’s what we’ll do. But if you tell me you don’t want to do this, that you feel like you’re being cornered into it and you’re not really sure… I swear to you we will find another way. So I need you to tell me: is this _really_ what you want to do?”

Sam hesitated, then nodded. “You may have broken the First Seal, but in the end? I’m the one that let him out, falling for Ruby and Lilith’s plan. You and I’re always putting everyone else first. It’s what we do. Saving people, hunting things…”

“The family business,” Dean finished.

“So how can I turn my back on that now? Even if it means giving up the bond with Gabriel?” Sam’s voice wobbled, a single tear escaping before he could wipe it away. “And it doesn’t mean that we can’t be together, if everything works out. It just means we’ll have to work a little harder at some things. He’s worth it, don’t you think?”

“Well, actually, he’s kind’ve a pain in the ass-” A laugh broke free as Sam gave him a not-quite playful shove of outrage. “Okay, okay. Yeah, he’s worth it.” Sighing, trying to keep his breath even, Dean felt the last thread of his control over the runaway train they had boarded finally snap. “Okay… so… that’s it, then. We head for Detroit tomorrow.”

“Detroit’s a big city,” Sam reasoned. “And it’s not like he gave us an address when he made that little prediction.”

“He didn’t need to.” Course chosen now, Dean resolved himself to it. There was no backing down now, for any of them. “With all the Horsemen out of the picture, the omens are gonna start thinning out. If we don’t recognize it from all the lore we’ve been boning up on in the past year, Gabe and Cas know him well enough to catch his sign.”

Sam nodded, then hugged Dean again. Dean let himself lean into it, let himself feel the way his support was helping Sam keep his own terror and grief and faltering confidence at bay. Let himself sink into a bond they would never be able to share again, knowing that whatever his regrets were over what acquiescing was going to cost them, Gabriel’s and Sam’s would be exponentially greater.

All he could hope for was that, in the end, all their sacrifices would be repaid by the universe they were trying to save.

_*Come on,*_ Dean finally said, staying entwined with Sam through the bond but gently retreating from their embrace. _*We deserve one last big night before... everything.*_

Sam caught Dean’s wrist before his brother could turn to go. _You’re staying with me?_ he asked, having caught the image in Dean’s thoughts.

_*I might have to agree to this,*_ Dean sent back to him. _*But nobody better ask me to be happy about it. And if there was anyone out there that expected me to let you walk into that bastard’s clutches by yourself… including you… let’s just say that they don’t know me nearly as well as they should.*_

Sam nodded, tears standing in his eyes from a thousand emotions and one, as the Winchesters walked side by side to help prepare what they both knew could be their last meal as a family.

* * *

Despite having been created to serve under one of the least war-like archangels in the Host, Gamaliel had known too many tense nights over the centuries. Abariel was helping Aziraphale to find a secure place for he and Crowley to hunker down until after things had come to a head, and Gamaliel was restless without his beloved Virtue within reach.

Finding Gabriel outside, gazing up at the moonless sky, was more of a surprise than it should’ve been. “I thought you’d be with Sam right now,” he offered quietly. “Given tomorrow.”

“Dean needs some time with him, too,” Gabriel replied. There was a careful blankness in his voice that Gamaliel recognized all too well. “I’m going up in a bit.”

Coming to stand beside his archangel, Gamaliel again wished that Abariel was here to join them. The night before the test at Sodom had been like this, but Abariel had been there to offer consolation, and after, to soothe Gabriel’s wounded spirit that so many children had been condemned to die. “We’ve seen too many nights like this, old friend,” he said aloud.

“After tomorrow, nights of any variety will probably be in short supply,” Gabriel mused softly. He turned to Gamaliel, his eyes taking in the warrior angel in one assessing glance before clearly making a decision. “Which is why you need to leave.”

Gamaliel visibly startled, staring at Gabriel in shock. “No. I won’t leave your side again. Not with what we’re about to face.”

“Yes, you will,” Gabriel countered. Everything about him now was the archangel of old, resolute in his role as YHWH’s Judge and Herald. “Zira’s going to ground with Crowley, and Singer’s refusing to be left behind. You’re going to take Abbi and get the Hell off this rock. Out of this galaxy, if the two of you have any sense at all.”

“You can’t ask this of us again,” Gamaliel argued.

“Exactly what gave you the impression I was asking?”

The tone in Gabriel’s voice left no room for further debate. “Will you let us say goodbye to Sam?”

“If he knows you’re gone, Lucifer will, too.” Something wobbled in his voice at that, but it was gone in an instant. “Just get away before dawn, both of you. Get as far away as you can. And if you happen to run across Dad on your way to Hoag’s, tell him that I said to fuck off.”

Gamaliel bowed, not bothering to mention that he had no intention of delivering a message of that kind to their Father. Gabriel knew him well enough to know better, no matter how serious the sentiment was on the archangel’s side. “You’ll find us when it’s over?”

The pause before Gabriel’s answer was itself answer enough. “You two’ve managed just fine without me around to muck up the works,” he joked. “But in a universe of infinite possibilities? We’ll see each other again.”

Gamliel nodded and straightened. “I’d best tell Abbi then, so we can say our farewells to Aziraphale and Crowley before we leave.” A pause, then: “It was an honor to serve you again, my brother… and we will never serve the Host again without you in it.” He turned away, poised to take flight and find Abariel…

“Mal?” Turning back, Gamaliel saw an emotion so raw on Gabriel’s face that it hurt his grace to look at it. “Do me a favor while you’re gone?”

“Anything,” Gamaliel promised at once.

“You and Abbi complete the bond as soon as you clear the solar system.” The starlight was just barely enough to make the tears on Gabriel’s cheeks glisten as he smiled. “Don’t let Abbi talk you out of it again. Whatever happens… whatever happens next, it’ll only make you the stronger when you have to face it.”

For a moment, Gamaliel was so surprised by the request that his only thought was to question why. Other than being on the cusp of losing his own bond, what could possibly drive Gabriel to insist…

And then he knew, and his eyes went wide a fraction before stepping forward. Heedless of any dignity Gabriel had tried to invoke when ordering him away, Gamaliel swept the archangel into a bear hug that would’ve crushed the bones of a lesser being, wings sweeping free of their confines to wrap around his old friend as Gabriel sank into the comfort of the embrace for just a moment… just a moment and a moment more to let himself feel what was coming…

“We will,” Gamaliel promised into Gabriel’s ear. “I promise, my brother… my Strength… we will.”

“Good.” Gabriel squeezed his Power just as hard before they both relinquished each other, his feet settling on the ground and his face now dried of its tears. “Now get gone before sunrise,” he ordered again. “And don’t look back, whatever you do.”

“We are neither of us Edith,” Gamaliel reminded him, though it was only half a joke. Neither of them needed the reference explained, and still mourned the fate of a good woman whose fear for what might be following her family had overcome her own sense of self-preservation. Gabriel offered him one last half smile, and then the Power let his wings carry him away.

_Father, if You can hear me, watch over them all… he knows not his own strength without You with us._

* * *

_Lazy, hazy warmth. The afternoon sunlight was the low, heavy orange of almost sunset, and the ocean was rolling against the beach in soothing waves only a few yards away. A bonfire was roaring steadily nearby, and Sam was lying on his back on a blanket, shirtless and shoeless, his arms folded under his head as he gazed up at the indigo blue of the sky._

_“Sam?”_

_Abariel’s voice was the last one Sam had expected to hear. He sat up in surprise as the angel came to sit beside him, barefoot and clad in a long tunic of periwinkle silk, his cormorant wings folded against his back. “Abbi, what-?”_

_“We haven’t much time.” Abariel reached out and took his hand. “You need to find his heart, Sam.”_

_“Gabriel’s?”_

_“No.” Abariel shook his head. “Lucifer’s. It’s still there. You have to find it. It’s the key to everything.”_

_Sam blinked at Abariel, confused. “I don’t understand.”_

_“You will.” Abariel squeezed his hand, offering a small smile. “Once you’re inside, you will.”_

_“Don’t you mean once_ he’s _inside?” Sam corrected. “He’s stepping into_ my _body, not the other way around.”_

_“He’ll be inside your body, yes,” Abariel agreed. “But you’ll be inside_ him _. You’ll understand better once you’re there. Don’t forget, Sam. Find his heart, and this can all finally be over.”_

_The seraph leaned in, wrapping Sam into a fierce hug. Sam hugged him back, wondering precisely why this felt so much like goodbye. “I won’t forget. It’ll be okay, Abbi. I promise.”_

_Smiling, Abbi cupped Sam’s jaw with one hand. “It will feel like you’re completely cut off,” he told Sam solemnly. “That you’re utterly alone in there. But you never are, Sam. Even in the Heart of the Morning Star, you’re never alone. Remember that, and everything else really will be all right.”_

_Pressing a gentle kiss of benediction to Sam’s forehead, the angel’s form shimmered and faded away, leaving Sam alone in the dreamscape with the roaring bonfire for only a moment before Gabriel appeared, his golden eyes flaming bright and desperate as he descended to capture Sam’s mouth with his own._

_And then there was no more talking. Not for a long, long time._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry.
> 
> _*hides under the furniture*_

~ooooOOOoooo~

The stillness of pre-dawn was a time that both Sam and Gabriel had come to savor: those precious few hours between the first rays of sunlight peeking through the curtains and the time when most other humans started their days. Sam had always risen earlier than Dean, but with a mate as unabashedly sensuous as Gabriel, those hours had become a time for languorous kissing, indulging in gentle explorations and lazy lovemaking rather than being devoted to an early cup of coffee and uninterrupted reading or research into their latest hunt.

Even that was contaminated by what was about to happen now, the lingering caresses as they held one another carrying a melancholy tension, neither able to help grieving what they were about to lose.

“You sure I can’t talk you into just hopping on the angel-express to get there?” Gabriel asked, a touch of wheedle in his voice. “We could just spend the day in bed; Dean and Cassi, too; and fly you out to my brother’s lair on the morning of.”

“We need every advantage we can get,” Sam told him.

“What advantage?” Gabriel pressed. “It’s a twelve-hour drive to Detroit from here, and then another twelve hours to drive from there back to Lawrence. Twenty-four hours on the road will only leave your brother exhausted and no margin for delay if he wants to beat them there and lay any kind of a trap. But if we spend the day here, then Dean and Cassi can drive down to Lawrence from here early on the day of while I fly you to Detroit at the last minute. It’ll leave Luci barely any time to get settled into your skin before he has to be at Stull, which might make all the difference in the end.”

Sam ran his hands over Gabriel’s slim, naked back, letting the feel of the deceptive muscle beneath his palms soak into his memory before he answered. “I don’t want to give you up,” he confessed softly.

“I don’t want you to give me up,” Gabriel concurred.

“Which means that I can’t ask you to stand there and watch me do it,” Sam continued, the words tumbling out as if trying to escape his ability to reign them in.

The smile that drew itself across Gabriel’s face was sad, almost self-mocking, and he turned his head to press a kiss against Sam’s breastbone to wipe it away before looking up at Sam. “It’s okay, gorgeous,” he forgave easily, his tone more playful than either of them felt. “If I was leaving me for another angel, I wouldn’t want me there for the coup de grace, either.”

Before Gabriel knew it, Sam was rolling him off his chest and pushing out of bed, almost running from the barb. In a flash, Gabriel was following him, catching Sam’s face in his hands and dragging him in for a kiss that devoured everything that they could possibly say to hurt each other.

Sam’s arms wrapped around Gabriel, hauling him in as they veered blindly towards a wall. The archangel’s legs wrapped around Sam’s hips as Sam found his target and shoved deep, a single hilted thrust that drove a groan from them both.

There was nothing slow or tender between them now, as there had been the previous night in both the waking world and the dreamscape Gabriel had built for them. Sam hammered into Gabriel’s body until their knees could no longer support them, tumbling gracelessly to the floor and Gabriel climbing back astride Sam to ride him mercilessly to a screaming, shuddering release, tears leaking from their eyes. It was Sam’s turn to draw Gabriel’s face down for a kiss once they were spent, aching for this to not be the end and knowing that there was no way to stop it from being so even if they won the following day.

It wasn’t until the kiss ended and Gabriel lay against him, fingers toying idly with one tender nipple, that Sam noticed the difference. “Where are they?”

“Luci’ll destroy them once he’s in if you wear them to the party,” Gabriel explained gently. “And it won’t do either of us any good to have a whole, formal, melancholy ‘taking them out’ moment. We’ll have a much more meaningful ‘putting them back in’ ceremony when this is all over, anyway.”

For a heartbeat, Sam almost wanted to protest. To insist that the piercings meant too much to him to be removed in the blink of an eye, with no acknowledgment of their larger meaning. But in space of the next beat, Gabriel’s emotions bled through, and every impulse to argue to point was silenced.

Just like Dean, Gabriel had to make it through the next few days. There was only so much anyone could ask the archangel to bear if that was going to happen. Including Sam.

“We will,” Sam agreed. “After all, he’ll probably heal them once it happens, which means you’ll need to pierce them all over again once we win.” Sam tightened his hug, feeling Gabriel nestle closer. “That was an amazing night.”

“One of the best nights of my life,” Gabriel agreed. He leaned up, looking down at Sam with a soft smile of remembrance. “We’re gonna make it through this,” he told Sam. “And when it’s all over, I’ll be right there waiting to whisk all four of us away to my private island for a _very_ long overdue vacation. Your brother and Cassi will have an entire cabana complex all to themselves, and you and I can get as loud as we please for days on end.” Sam moaned low in his throat and Gabriel kissed him. “I’m going to re-pierce those beautiful nipples and trick them out with a dozen different adornments. We’ll spend at least a week completely naked and you won’t have to worry about anything, including Dean, because he’ll be on the other side of the island sinking up to those ridiculously perfect eyebrows into his own debauchery with Cassi.” He kissed Sam again as those hands came up to frame his hips. “It’ll be perfect, Sam… you’ll see.”

“Just gotta live through the Apocalypse first,” Sam agreed. “No big deal.”

Gabriel smiled against his lips and shifted them back up into the bed. Sam’s knees slid open, welcoming the weight of the archangel’s renewed arousal against his own. Time couldn’t be stopped, or even slowed down, but they still had a few hours, and Gabriel intended to make the most of them. “Not a big deal at all.”

* * *

By the time coffee and breakfast were ready, Sam could feel their lovemaking in almost every cell of his body. Bobby had given him the side-eye, probably because the old hunter was a fairly early riser himself and had likely heard them, but he was gracious enough to leave it there, considering what they all knew was about to happen. Dean, on the other hand, was watching Sam with an expression that kept shifting between wanting to yell at him for not taking care to muffle how much sex he and Gabriel were having and wanting to call the whole thing off and tell the world to sort out its own problems so that Sam and Gabriel go from break-up sex to make-up sex without actually having to break up in the middle.

It made Sam feel like he was under a microscope, especially since Gabriel was no longer by his side for what felt very much like a last meal before the gallows. And a twelve-hour drive was eleven hours and fifty-nine minutes too long if this was going to be the atmosphere the whole way. “Look,” Sam finally said as they were settling in and passing around the bacon. “We all know what’s happening today. We all know how we all feel about it, and we all know that it’s going to be a nightmare. But can you guys stop looking at me like I’m about to walk into a noose? It’ll be a lot easier for me to get through this if everyone around me isn’t either looking like they wanna scream at me or like I’m dying of cancer.”

“Since neither is the case, that shouldn’t be a problem,” Castiel agreed. Sam could feel him casting out his senses for a moment before looking at Sam in confusion. “Where’s Gabriel?”

“He left after we got a shower,” Sam told him, refusing to acknowledge how a flaming blush crept up the back of his neck as Dean’s eyes rolled at the image in Sam’s memory. “He’s going to meet you guys at Stull Cemetery with the rings. He’s the only one strong enough to protect them, and the only one of us not going to Detroit besides. It’s the only way to be sure that we don’t lose our trap before we even have a chance to set it.”

“He’s not coming?” Dean echoed, his eyebrows going up.

Sam met his gaze, a calm challenge hiding a barely-contained pulse of heartbreak across the bond. “I asked him not to.”

After a moment, Dean nodded and returned to his breakfast. “So… you think there’s a chance Gill can turn the Jawyhawks around next season?”

The question touched off a passionate discussion of NCAA football that lasted through the end of breakfast, into the Impala and at least an hour down the highway. It also gave Sam plenty of cover to send Gabriel one last pulse of love and regret as they pulled away from the salvage yard, and a distraction from wondering if he would ever see this place that had become his second home again.

* * *

Even for humans as used to traveling the roads as Sam and Dean, trying to drive over eight-hundred and fifty miles was impossible to do in one shot. It had been Dean’s idea to drive in rather than fly, hoping against hope that Lucifer wouldn’t immediately notice Castiel’s grace or his and Sam’s own preternatural signatures if they entered the city by a human mode of transportation. That, and it gave them a chance to scan local papers and news broadcasts as they entered the city, hoping that the omens that would tell them where to find Lucifer would be in one of the reports.

It was at a gas stop in Ann Arbor before they found it. “Gotta love a town like Detroit,” Bobby groused as he brought a copy of the Detroit Free Press and a bagful of junk food out of the tiny station’s store. “So much evil crap going down that even the end of the world can’t make the front page.”

“Whaddya mean?” Dean asked, peering at the newspaper Bobby had folded open in his hand.

“It’s not like this town hasn’t seen its share of sub-arctic temperatures,” Bobby elaborated, tapping an article with the index finger of the hand holding the plastic grocery bag. “But five blocks around midtown Detroit have seen a localized temperature drop of more’n twenty degrees… way lower than the rest of the city gets even for this time of year.”

“That’s where he is, then,” Dean mused. Sam had gotten out of the car to stretch his legs and was now standing beside the open front-passenger door, his arms crossed on the roof and his expression such a polished neutral that Dean would’ve known it was a mask for his benefit even without the bond giving him access to how much lead Sam was currently carrying around in his chest. “It say where the center of it is?”

“Just that it’s five blocks in the Cass Park historic district in midtown.” Bobby scanned the article again, not bothering to hide his speed-reading as he usually did in public. “Including the James Scott mansion, which was supposed to get renovated into apartments until the bubble burst in ‘08.”

Dean met Sam’s eyes over the car’s roof. Both of them nodded at the same time as the gas pump clicked over, registering that the tank was full. Bobby and Sam climbed into the car as Dean finished the transaction, peering at Castiel in the back seat as he climbed in himself. The angel had entered a deep meditative state as they’d gotten closer and closer to Detroit, attempting to mask his grace from any demonic detection grid that Lucifer might have set up, if not Lucifer himself. The only way Dean could tell that he was not, in fact, sleeping was the steady thrum of reassurance that came from the angel through their bond, a second heartbeat that steadied his own.

Accepting a soda from Sam, Dean turned the key in the ignition and tried to suppress the foreboding that was growing with every passing mile of their descent into Hell on Earth.

* * *

They arrived in the neighborhood surrounding the James Scott Mansion at nearly ten at night. The area saw little foot traffic at this time of night, with only a small Chinese restaurant that remained open at this hour of a weeknight. They found an alley near the mansion that allowed adequate sight lines, and Bobby went to the mouth of it with his binoculars while Sam, Dean and Castiel waited in the loading area behind one of the buildings.

“You remember when demons used to be above our pay grade?” Sam asked Dean, a bout of last-minute nerves driving the question. “And the most dangerous things we hunted were wendigos?”

Dean nodded. He was leaning back against the Impala beside his brother, and let his right hand slip out of the pocket of his leather jacket and tangle into Sam’s left with a reassuring squeeze. “Yeah… simpler times, right?”

“Ever wish we could go back to that?” Sam couldn’t help asking.

“I’ve seen the world that kind of wishing would put us in, Sammy,” Dean told him. “And yeah, there’s a lot of things I’d rewrite if I could… but not at the expense of us.”

Sam cast a questioning look at Dean, but Bobby came hustling back down the alley before he could get Dean to elaborate. “Demons,” he reported. “At least two dozen between lookouts and the guards on the perimeter. You were right, Dean: it’s gotta be him.”

Dean nodded. Without a word, he pulled Sam into a tight hug as they both pushed away from the Impala, closing his eyes and letting himself sink one last time into the way it felt to be tied to Sam this way. “You can do this,” Dean told him. “I won’t leave your side for a second. You got this all night long.”

“Thanks,” Sam murmured, squeezing tightly before letting Dean go. He watched as his brother headed up to the mouth of the alley, giving Sam a moment of privacy with Bobby and Castiel before walking into the inevitable.

“I’ll see ya around, kid,” Bobby offered, pulling Sam into a hug just as tight as Dean’s. They had agreed that Bobby would stay behind with the engine running, ready to make a quick exit if Castiel had to extract Dean, and possibly Sam as well, in a hurry.

“See ya around.” Sam hoped it would be true. Hoped against hope that what he was about to do would be proven worth the cost, in the end.

“You fight him tooth and nail, you understand?” Bobby instructed as he stepped back out of the embrace, trying for stern but instead sounding almost desperate. “Keep swingin’. Don’t give an inch.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam agreed. He offered Bobby a reassuring smile as the older man went around the Impala and got into the driver’s seat, then turned to Castiel. “Once I’m gone, Cas… I…”

“I’ll keep Dean on plan,” Castiel assured him. “I won’t let him do anything too reckless.”

In a rare moment of solitude with the angel, Sam permitted himself a nervous swallow. “Do you think I can do this?”

A glance up the alley at Dean, who was watching he and Sam as much as he was the street leading up to the mansion. And then Castiel was reaching up to draw Sam into an embrace, a gentle kiss brushing across Sam’s mouth as the angel’s head came to rest beside his own. “You are not who I once thought you were,” Castiel told him. “You overcame a blood magic thrall and your own worst impulses, and have been everything the mate of an archangel should be. And now, you are offering yourself up as a sacrifice not because you think it will expiate some sin you have committed, but because you are a good man who is willing to do whatever is necessary to save innocent people from catastrophe.” When Castiel slid back out of the hug, there were tears standing in Sam’s eyes as he offered a reassuring smile. “You do not go into this sacrifice alone, Sam. And I will do everything in my power to ensure that the outcome is worth the price you are about to pay. I swear on my grace.”

Sam nodded, managing a smile of his own. “Thanks, Cas.” Taking a long breath, Sam squared himself and turned to stride up the alley, Castiel on his seven o’clock and Dean on his five as they exited onto the street and walked towards the mansion in plain sight. “All right!” he shouted, putting as much volume into the bellow as he could. “We’re here, you sons of bitches! Come and get it!”

Demons came pouring out of the building, surrounding the trio almost too quickly to see. Castiel’s sword was in his hand as he eyed them with undisguised contempt, but Dean made a quick restraining gesture with his left hand and offered the leader of the black-eyed phalanx a cocky smile. “Hey, guys. Is your father home?”

A chill smile from the one Dean was staring down, and then a curt hand gesture of his own. At once, the swarm closed, manhandling both men and seraph into the building and up to a second floor room that was so cold that it could’ve been used as a meat locker.

And standing in the center of that room, his vessel showing a shocking state of decay, was Lucifer. “Hey, guys,” he greeted, his voice unwontedly warm despite both who it belonged to and his history with the Winchesters. “So nice of you to drop in. Sorry if it’s a bit chilly.” Almost absent-mindedly, he turned away from his three nemeses and stepped over to the bay window in the corner, letting out a long, open-mouthed breath. The window frosted over in an instant, allowing Lucifer to draw a trident on the window with one finger. “Most people think I burn hot… it’s actually quite the opposite.”

“Well, I’ll alert the media,” Dean quipped, unable to keep the contempt from his voice even now. Castiel moved closer to him on instinct, hoping to keep Dean from doing something precipitous.

Lucifer chuckled, turning back towards them. “Help me understand something, guys. I mean, stomping through my front door… especially with only _one_ of your angels in tow and not even the most powerful one at that... that’s a tad suicidal, don’t you think?”

“We’re not here to fight you,” Sam told him. All of his focus was on Lucifer now. With Castiel here to keep Dean on mission and Gabriel safely elsewhere, Sam didn’t need to split his attention anywhere else.

He watched Lucifer’s eyes slowly shift to meet his own. He had Lucifer’s full attention now, too. “No? Then why are you?”

“I want to say ‘yes’.”

There was a truly gratifying moment, if only for the barest of heartbeats, in which Sam saw Lucifer caught completely off guard. It was gone in a blink, but Sam had seen it… which meant he could use it. “Excuse me?”

Letting himself close his eyes, Sam took a steadying breath and centered. Lucifer wouldn’t move against him yet, not when Sam had him this intrigued. Reaching deep as Gabriel had taught him, Sam called up the cherubic grace that had remained muted in his veins for so long. It sang to life as he touched it, flowing through him like iron-laced quicksilver, eager to obey his commands.

He knew where they all were without needing to see. They were easy to spot: writhing masses of sentient shadow that had wriggled into a human body and burnt out the soul that had rightfully been housed there. Parasites that gave neither thought nor care to the destruction they wreaked. There were more of them than Bobby had thought: dozens of them concealed throughout the district and still more in outposts around the city. The ones in and around the house had no idea what was happening as the cool tendrils of his power laced around them. A frisson of unquiet their only warning.

All at once, he let the power loose: grace fire flashing to life along the spiderweb he’d woven. Bodies collapsed to the ground as Sam burned out Lucifer’s demonic entourage with a thought, the satisfaction made all the sweeter when he opened his eyes to find Lucifer gazing at him with something like approbation on his rotting features.

“Chock full of Ovaltine, are we?” Lucifer asked, his tone mild as he took a step closer to Sam.

“I don’t need it anymore,” Sam told him. “I know how to control it without tainting my body with demon blood… which makes me an even stronger Vessel for you than if I had to drink the gallons that you’re burning through to keep that corpse in one piece.”

“And with all that power at your disposal,” Lucifer purred. “You’re here to say ‘yes’?”

“You heard me,” Sam returned calmly. “We tried to stop Armageddon and failed. There’s no getting off the train now. You made me a lot of promises once, and you said you’d never lie to me. So I’m here to cash in the deal… provided you add Gabriel to the list.”

“You’re serious.” Lucifer’s eyes narrowed assessingly, then widened just a fraction. “He died to keep me away from you, and now you’re here… gotta say, Sam: that’s colder than I expected from you.”

The reminder enraged Sam, driving him forward until he was chest to chest with the Devil. “Let’s not pretend that you didn’t kill him because he got there first,” Sam hissed, fists half-clenched in fury. “Or that it doesn’t make you crazy that nothing can change that, no matter how deep inside my skin you crawl.”

“And yet, even with all my brother’s tricks, I’m the one you’re panting for,” Lucifer purred, a lazy smile curling across his withering face. Dean started forward with a snarl, and Lucifer held up one hand even as Castiel pulled the other human back by the wrist. “Uh-uh, Dean… just because I’m willing to let you watch doesn’t mean I’m interested in letting you join in.”

“Keep talking, asshole,” Dean growled. “See if I don’t kill you right here.”

“I appreciate the thought, champ, but the only way you could manage that is with Death’s scythe or an archangel’s blade.” His eyes flickered towards Dean, his expression faintly smug now. “You don’t have the one, and we all know what happened when my little brother tried his luck with the other.”

“And none of it matters at this point,” Sam snapped, pushing further into Lucifer’s space. “Because I’m here, and I’m saying yes. I no longer want to be Gabriel’s mate, and I want to let you use me as your True Vessel. You gonna take me up on it or not?”

Taking another step back, Lucifer looked Sam up and down in a manner so frankly assessing that it made Dean’s teeth grind to stay unresponsive. “You think you can win,” Lucifer finally concluded, his smile still condescending. “You can’t reason with Michael; of course you can’t. No one’s ever been able to reason with him. So you’re here to say yes, even at the price of giving up your mating bond, because you think that once I’m in there you can take back control before Michael and I have it out.” The flicker of panic in Sam’s eyes set Lucifer laughing. “Of course that’s your plan. You boys really are constitutionally incapable of accepting reality.”

“If you think so, then you’ve got nothing to lose.” Sam’s eyes were hard.

For a moment, Lucifer measured Sam with his eyes, touching his index finger to his lips in consideration. “A fiddle of gold against your soul says I’m better than you,” he half-sang, and then his hand flashed out, catching Sam’s wrist and yanking Sam up against his body until their lips were half a breath apart. “Deal.”

Light flared, intense and incandescent, brighter even than it had been in the convent when Lucifer had first risen from the Cage. It was all Dean could do to keep himself from flinching as the connections forged by Sam’s mating bond with Gabriel snapped like overtaxed wires, hand flying up to shield his face even as he refused to look away… refused to leave Sam alone for even the barest heartbeat...

When it finally faded, the crumbling corpse that Lucifer had been wearing was a crumpled heap on the floor. Sam still stood where he’d been, his eyes closed and his features oddly serene. Replete. The air was so still that it took Dean a moment to realize that he was the only one breathing.

Hazel eyes opened, and Sam’s head turned towards them. Something ancient and alien stirred within them, familiar in a way that made Dean want to scream in horror and driving him an instinctive step forward. “Sam?”

Castiel’s hand wrapped around his right wrist, stilling his momentum. “Dean, don’t. That’s not your brother anymore.”

A lazy smile straight out of Dean’s worst nightmares drew across Sam’s lips. “I told you, Dean: we were always going to end up here.”

The grip on his wrist tightened, his mate reading the charge coiled into his muscles before they’d even finished tensing. “It’s not over yet, asshole,” Dean growled.

Those lips parted to frame a reply. What it would have been, Dean would never be sure, because it was silenced by Sam’s head being drawn down to meet one capped by sunset-blonde hair in a fervent kiss. Shocked into true immobility, Dean and Castiel could only stare at Gabriel as the kiss ended, unable to process what they were seeing. “So, bro… how’d I do?”

If Lucifer’s surprise at Sam’s desire to say ‘yes’ had been fleetingly visible, it was a measure of how unexpected a moment this was that stunned incomprehension was writ large on Sam’s face for the span of a dozen thundering heartbeats before it melted into narrow suspicion. “You’re not serious.”

Gabriel grinned at him. “I told you I’d win one eventually. It’s not my fault you didn’t believe me.”

“What the fuck d’you think you’re doing?” Dean demanded, finally finding his voice. “Gabriel, what the Hell…?”

“I told you all the way back in Wellington, Dean-o,” Gabriel told him, turning his back to Lucifer and offering a smile so full of malice and mischief that Dean couldn’t help flashing back to their first confrontation. “You two need to play your roles. Michael got tired of waiting and found himself an understudy, but Luci here… well, demons are a mightily stupid bunch and killed off almost everybody that could’ve filled in for Sammykins. So I decided to take steps.”

“You mated with Sam in order to deliver him to Lucifer?” Castiel growled. “Is there nothing of Heaven that you hold sacred?”

“Not much,” Gabriel confirmed with an off-handed shrug. “Michael’s lost the plot, Dad’s AWOL and Yeshua’s decided to write about the end of days instead of taking a hand in them. Humans have either discarded us entirely or have so little respect for us that it’s actually offensive. If they have no loyalty to us, why should we have any loyalty to them?”

“So you played them.” Lucifer’s voice was a low purr in Sam’s throat, drawing Gabriel’s attention away from the outraged hunter and his furious mate. “And me as well. All in the name of declaring your loyalty by delivering my recalcitrant Vessel to me?”

“Why not?” Gabriel asked. “The bond protected both of us long enough to ensure that he got here in one piece. And as adorable as ‘Team Free Will’s’ intentions were,” he added with a derisive glance back at Dean before turning back to Lucifer’s assessing gaze, “they were the only ones delusional enough to seriously expect that they could succeed in stopping this. The only thing really standing in the way is how everyone... including you, brother mine… kept underestimating them.”

“And you knew better?” Lucifer observed, tone mild as milk.

“I had a couple low-key run-ins with them before things got serious that were providentially instructive,” Gabriel replied easily, unperturbed by Lucifer’s continued suspicion.

“And what _exactly_ did they teach you?” Dean snarled.

Another, almost pitying smile curled Gabriel’s lips, his eyes flickering condescension at the human even as he addressed his answer to Lucifer rather than Dean. “I learned that to beat these boys… you have to love them.”

It was the last Dean could take. He charged across the space between them, Castiel leaping to try and pull him back, only to find that Lucifer and Gabriel had both flashed from the center of the room to the open door behind them. Dean spun on his heels, Castiel wrapping both arms around his chest to keep him from launching another attack. “I’m gonna enjoy ripping your lungs out, you sonuvabitch,” Dean told him, a deadly promise lacing every word.

“Like big bro said, champ,” Gabriel replied gamely, “I appreciate the sentiment, but the only thing spunk gets you when you’re trying to punch this far above your weight is dead.”

“You will answer for this, Gabriel,” Castiel warned, his own tone ominous. “Whatever comes, I will see to that.”

“You can try, Cassi,” Gabriel offered, nonplussed by the threat. “After all, you are the little angel that could. Who knows? You might even manage to hurt me before someone sends you on a one-way trip to find our deadbeat Daddio.”

“We’ve wasted enough time on these two,” Lucifer advised his brother, one hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “There are other things to attend before meeting Michael.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Gabriel acceded. “We should go and let them posture in private.” He took Lucifer’s hand before looking back one last time. “Oh, and Dean? You showed some pretty good instincts back when I first mated your brother… figuring out my plan like that. Next time they tell you something, you really should listen to them and not let people talk you out of what they’re telling you. Might save your life someday.”

A roar of inchoate rage tore out of Dean’s throat as he broke free of Castiel’s grip. But before he was even halfway to his target, both Lucifer and Gabriel were gone, the afterimage of an insouciant wink from the Herald and a victorious smirk from the Morningstar burned into Dean’s mind as they flew beyond his reach.

Taking humanity’s last spark of hope with them.


End file.
